Hello and welcome to Word Magazine. This is Jeff Riddle, pastor of Christ Reformed Baptist Church in Louisa, Virginia. Today is Sunday, April 21st of 2019. Today is that day on the calendar that is known to many as Easter Sunday. In Reformed circles, this is always interesting because we try to follow the regular principle and we don't try to follow a liturgical calendar and have extra biblical holidays. So I'm sure that in many, many reformed churches, they started the day by saying, this is Resurrection Sunday for us at CRBC. You know, it's hard to ignore that it's a day when many people are focusing on the resurrection. We did sing some resurrection psalms and hymns, sang Psalm 16, sang, we sang Psalm 110. We sang Christ the Lord is risen today from the Trinity hymnal. And it just so happened that I've been preaching through the gospel of John and in the providence of God, the text that I was on this morning was John 20 verses one through 10. John's account of the empty tomb or the empty sepulcher. And so I think it was the first time in several years I've actually preached on Easter Sunday on an explicit resurrection narrative from one of the Gospels. It was a good Lord's Day for us today at CRBC. And because it was a holiday weekend, the place where my son plays baseball and I coach, the park was closed, thankfully on Saturday, so I had more time than I normally do and I was able to sit down and compose a few notes so that I could sit down today and record this Word Magazine. In this Word Magazine, Word Magazine 121, I want to do two different things. First of all, I want to offer some reflections on the updated New American Standard Bible that will be coming out in 2020 based on some of the translation changes that have been released and appeared. And there was a blog article. Last month, it was on March 26, on the Evangelical Tech Criticism blog, where they listed at least five verses where they compared, here's what the old NASB read, and here's what the revised NASB coming out in 2020. This is how it will read. And so I want to review those. And then secondly, I want to do something kind of different. I want to offer some reflections on the fire that happened at the Notre Dame Cathedral last week and I want to approach it from a little bit of a different angle. I want to see it as an analogy that can be drawn to some of the difficulties of reconstruction and draw an analogy between what happened with Notre Dame Cathedral, what will happen with attempts to reconstruct it and the Texas Receptus and attempts to reconstruct text of the Christian scriptures. So we're going to do those two things. Let's begin with some reflections on the New American Standard Bible. Again, it's due to be updated in the year 2020. The New American Standard Bible was one of the earliest sort of evangelical modern translations. The New Testament appeared in 1963 and the Old Testament in 1971. So it predates the NIV. Sort of lost, I think, some of its momentum though as the NIV grew in popularity, but it's still a translation that's quite popular with many conservatives, many people. I know when I was in seminary I liked the NASB because it follows generally a more formal correspondence method of translation philosophy and so it was a good translation to have when you were doing translating passages from the Greek New Testament if you wanted to compare and and check your translation, the NASB was thought to be a good one. It was based, the translation was based on the American Standard Version of 1901, which in turn was the American edition of the revised English version that had come out in the late 19th century. and for the New Testament was based on the Westcott and Hort Modern Greek New Testament. The NASB was updated. An updated edition appeared in 1995. And now in 2020, I guess some 25 years after the 1995 update, they plan to release a new updated edition. And this caught my eye again when I saw back on March 26 on the Evangelical Text Criticism blog, there was a post there I think that was borrowed actually from another website where someone had listed five of the verses in the 1995 reading and in the proposed 2020 edition. And I thought it'd be interesting just to review this and then to talk about some of the difficulties that are inherent with modern translations and with the updating of them. So there are five verses that are listed. And again, as always on my blog, JeffRiddle.net, I will have my notes posted and you can read the notes there. I may do two blog posts since I'm really doing two different topics. I may do one with this NASB review. I'll do another one maybe on the Notre Dame analogy. So let's start with these five passages from the NASB 2020. So the first one is 1 Thessalonians 5 14 and in the NASB 1995 it read, We urge you brethren, admonish the unruly, encourage the fainthearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. And in the NASB 2020, it's going to read, we urge you brothers and sisters, admonish the unruly, encourage the faint-hearted, help the weak, be patient with everyone. And the change here is from 1995, it was brethren And in the 2020 edition, it's going to be brothers and sisters. So here's my commentary. The Greek word obviously underlying the translation of the word brethren in the 1995 edition and brothers and sisters in the 2020 is the Greek noun adelphoi. And it's a masculine nominative plural. And they're going to change it again from brethren to brothers and sisters. And undoubtedly, this reflects a desire for so-called gender inclusivity, which is very popular in our postmodern days. Yes, of course, Paul was writing to the whole church. He was addressing men and women disciples. But the term that was used by Christians was not brothers and sisters. They had a perfectly good word for sisters and obviously a good word for brothers, Adelphoi. But when they referred to the church, they used the masculine term inclusively to refer to men and women, simply Adelphoi or brethren. So I'm not crazy about this attempt at gender inclusivity. It changes the sense. It's not a formal correspondence method. So I'm not crazy about that change. The second passage listed is Micah, chapter 6, verse 8. In the NASB 1995, it reads, he has told you, O man, what is good. That's the beginning of it, as a dot, dot, dot. And in the updated 2020 edition, apparently it's going to read, he has told you, a human, what is good. And the difference is going to be, whereas in the 1995, it uses the phrase, oh man, whereas in the 2020, it says, a human. And I looked up the Hebrew real quickly, and behind the translation in Hebrew is the noun Adam, from which you get the name Adam. And it simply means a man, a human being, and particularly a male human being. And this is another trend toward gender inclusivity. Instead of saying, oh man, apparently that is not inclusive enough, they want to change it to a human. And it seems like they're also taking it rather than as an exclamation or evocative, oh man. They're also putting it more in apposition to you. He has told you, a human, what is good. But I think the main thing is it's an attempt at gender inclusivity. The problem I see is the new reading seems to sacrifice readability for political correctness. saying oh man actually has a lot of sort of a contemporary ring to it he has told you oh man what is good addressing of course human beings inclusively when we say oh man we're saying oh people But who goes around using the word human in a kind of a stilted way like this? He has told you, a human, what is good. So again, it seems to sacrifice readability, comprehensibility for political correctness. The next passage that is listed is Joshua chapter 1, verse 9. In the 1995, it reads, Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not tremble or be dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." And in the 2020 update, apparently it's going to read, Have I not commanded you, be strong and courageous, do not be terrified nor dismayed, for the Lord your God is with you wherever you go." And here the difference seems to be fairly minor from changing it from 1995, do not tremble or be dismayed, to do not be terrified nor dismayed. The King James Version reads, be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed. And again, I can see it probably in the range of the Hebrew verb To tremble would be in the semantic range for to be terrified, to be frightened. One who is frightened would tremble. The 1995 used don't tremble or be dismayed. Again, it's also a different negative particle in the 2020s. Do not be terrified nor dismayed. This is one of those changes where I wonder, what's the urgency in making this change? Was it compelling? Was it change just for the sake of change? That's one, I think, that often happens in these updates. Scholars get a chance to pore over a text and, you know, they're getting paid, I guess, to edit it, and they've spent this time on it. They have to come up with some kind of change. That just seems to be a rather insignificant one. Let's go on to the next verses. Luke 1, 38. In the 1995, it reads, and Mary said, behold, the Lord's bond slave. May it be done to me according to your word, and the angel departed from her. Whereas in the 2020, the proposed change is going to be, and Mary said, behold the Lord's slave. May it be done to me according to your word, and the angel departed from her. And the difference here is whether it should read bondslave, as in the 1995, or slave, as in the 2020. And behind the English words is the Greek term doule, which means a female slave or servant or bondservant. The masculine may be a little more familiar, doulos. which means slave, servant, or bondservant. Why did they change it from bondslave in the 1995 to slave in the 2020? There was a book that was put out a couple years ago by John MacArthur, popular evangelical Calvinistic, though dispensational, teacher out in California. And he, I think, objected to the use of the term bondservant and talked about there ought to be a preference for the word slave. I'll put a link to that book if you want to look at it. The problem I see here is that in the American context in particular, It seems like this change may produce some confusion over our understanding of slavery as an institution in the first century Hellenistic world, as opposed to slavery as it was known in later centuries, particularly for those of us in the US. in the American pre-Civil War South. I wonder why bond slave to slave, it's not even bond servant, it's bond slave in the 1995 and then to change it to slave. Again, it just seems to me to be a change, we wonder why. Was this necessary? And might it actually create more of a problematic reading for modern people? But anyways, the last one we'll look at, maybe the most consequential, it's John 1.18. And this is quite a controversial verse with regard to text and translation. In the 1995 edition of the NASB, it read, no one has seen God at any time. The only begotten God, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has explained Him. And the 2020 update, proposed update, it's apparently going to read, No one has seen God at any time. God, the only Son, who is in the arms of the Father, He has explained Him. And there are two changes that are reflected here. The first is, whereas in the 1995 it reads, the only begotten God, and that's been changed to, in the 2020, God, the only Son. And that's the most significant one, theologically, Christologically. And then a more minor change, whereas the 1995 says, who is in the bosom of the father, the 2020 is going to say, who is in the arms of the father. So let me look at these changes. The first one, again, represents the most intriguing doctrinal change of these that we've looked at. John 118 has been a debated text. I did a Word Magazine, Word Magazine 56. I'll have a link to this in my blog article on John 118, the textual issues. There are two key readings that are reflected in the textual tradition. One of those is uh... reads would read monogamous that loss uh... monogamous over got a question we'll see in a moment is how that should be translated to be translated as uh... the one and only that lost god or the only big gotten god so that's in one textual tradition in there's also question whether the uh... article should be in front of the car monogamous that loss And the other tradition would be ha manages quias. either the one and only son or the only begotten son. So the first of those readings, Managanes Theas, is reflected in the modern critical text. You can see it in the Nesolon 28th edition. While the latter reading, Ha Managanes Hwias, is the reading reflected in the Texas Receptus. And so the King James Version reads, the only begotten Son, not the only begotten God. And interestingly enough, in the Tyndale House Greek New Testament that came out in 2017, this is one of the places where they departed from the modern critical text. They also adopt the, we'll call it the traditional text reading. This is an interesting point for somebody like James White who says, you know, you can't give us a consistent method. If you just use the modern critical method, you would come up with a definitive reading for every text. But, well, the people who use the modern critical method for the NA28 think the reading at John 118 should be managenes theos, whereas the editors of the Tyndale House Greek New Testament, who are also committed to reason and eclecticism in the modern critical method, they say that the reading should be ha managenes hwias. So, anyways, it's an interesting division. Now, to get to the New American Standard Bible, again, their rendering of this phrase is God, the only Son. And I'm wondering what textual tradition they were following, because it seems like they're really not following either of those two major options, but they seem in some ways to be combining them in a way, again, that's not reflected in any extant textual reading. So, if I was looking at their translation that's proposed, God the only Son, we would expect to find a text that would read something like, monogamous Huyas. So they use both Thaos and Huyas. But I don't think there's any text that actually reads that way. At least there isn't, I don't think, one listed in the Nessalon 28th edition apparatus. The other thing about the NASB update is Whereas in the 1995 edition, they had translated monogamous as only begotten. It's more traditional Tyndale KJV language there, even though they chose to render it as God, Theos, rather than son, Hwios. And now they've changed it to God the only son. So this reflects a different understanding of what the term monogamous means. And this is actually a point of interpretation that would certainly be disputed. Again, how should monogamous be translated? Interestingly enough, I was looking at the NASB 2020 and I looked at the NRSV of 1989 and it reads in this passage, it is God the only son. So actually the NASB 2020 has been brought more in line with the translation that was chose by the New Revised Standard Version used in many mainline churches in their 1989 a version of the RSV called the NRSV. And again, they take monogamous to mean unique or one of a kind. And as someone pointed out to me recently that If you read James White's book, The Forgotten Trinity, that came out in 1998, he also advocates for understanding monogamies not as the traditional Tyndale-KJV rendering, only begotten, but it should be rendered as the sense of only unique or one of a kind. So you can look at his Forgotten Trinity book on pages 61 through 64, and in particular at footnote 27. If you have that book, it's found on pages 201 to 203. The question is, though, in light of some more recent developments in scholarship and particularly the current, we could call it the retrieval movement, where contemporary biblical theologians and systematic theologians are saying, hey, we need to retrieve classical theistic views, particularly on the doctrine of God and on the Trinity. And there's been some dispute of late about the whole idea of what is known as the doctrine of the eternal regeneration of the sun. And there's a collection of essays edited by Fred Sanders and Scott Swain, came out in 2017 from Zondervan, titled Retrieving Eternal Generation. And I think there's actually now a trend to say, hey, with a passage like John 1 18, that monogamous should be taken, as it is in the Tyndale KJV tradition, as only begotten, and also an argument theologically in support of the traditional reading, ha monogamous hwios, the only begotten son, and seeing it as part of a classical theistic construal of the eternal generation of the sun and if you change it to reflect the either the modern text and this modern translation angle and you translate it as the only God, that it may actually reflect an inadequate understanding of the eternal generation of the sun in Trinitarian theology. So one wonders, was this a wise move on the part of the editors of the NASB? The second issue within John 118 has to do with how to translate the Greek word kolpas, which in the Tyndale KJV rendering, which previously was reflected in the New American Standard Bible, the 1995 update. where they used the word bosom, who is in the bosom of the father. Now, for some reason, they have changed it in the update to who is in the arms of the father. And this seems to me to be another curious change, because there is a perfectly good Greek word for arm, broxion. But here, clearly, there's not a textual dispute. The word is bosom, kolpas. Why did they change it? If the intention of John was to say that the sun is in the bosom or the breast the Father. Obviously, it's an anthropomorphic image. God doesn't have a breast or bosom, but it conveys by analogy, you know, a father holding close the son. It reflects closeness and intimacy. Why would they want to change it to saying he is in the arms I don't understand, again, why you would want to change it. Again, it seems to be an unnecessary change, and it seems to be a movement away from attempting a more word-for-word, trying to reflect what's actually there in the Greek text. The Greek text doesn't have arms. It has bosom. And they could have used, the writer could have used arms. It's a perfectly good Greek word for it, but he didn't choose to do that. So anyways, those are the five, those are the five changes. that have been revealed thus far. Just a couple of closing conclusions. I think these changes just illustrate one of the major problems in general with modern translations, and that is their lack of stability. You might say, well, it's been 25 years. 25 years, you know, would warrant an updating. But even if you wait 25 years, that means in the normal course of a person's life, the Bible that he uses might change, you know, two, three, four times. And this doesn't help. This, in fact, undermines, I think, the usefulness of a translation if it's unstable. It undermines its usefulness for memorization. It undermines the liturgical. Usefulness of a translation, it undermines its usefulness in scholarship, if it's to be used in quotations and scholarly articles or commentaries and so forth. It just makes the translation unstable and also opens it up for, again, passing fads, ideas, whether that's, you know, how the word doula should be rendered, whether it's how the word monogamist should be rendered. And there's not a timelessness to the translation. And I think the NASB, the updated edition 2020, I think where it's probably going to create more controversy is going to be in the apparent tendency within it, as demonstrated at least by these example verses, toward greater so-called gender inclusivity at the expense of literal accuracy. And, you know, it seems like you wonder, when will evangelicals learn? Many know that, you know, earlier in the 21st century, we had the controversy over what was known as the TNIV, which came out in, I think, 2002. And it attempted to apply gender inclusivity to the NIV. I think probably at that time they were thinking it was going to even replace the NIV, and there was a lot of backlash, there was a lot of debate, and even a lot of conservative evangelicals of the complementarian ilk like Wayne Grudem wrote about it. I remember at the time I was a member of the Evangelical Theological Society, and I remember at several regional and national meetings there were papers given on it. Going to a paper by Mark Strauss and going to one by Wayne Grudem, debating this whole issue of gender inclusivity. And eventually, Zondervan discontinued the TNIV. There was so much controversy about it. Although, they did this I think in 2011 when they came up with the updated edition of the NIV. But it's like they never give up. So there was no learning from the failure and controversy of the TNIV. Let's just use gender inclusivity in the New American Standard Bible. And I think, sadly, well, I don't know if I'll say sadly, I think the end result is going to be that probably the NASB is going to be used even less because of this update. Anyway, so those are just some thoughts on the New American Standard Bible update. So let me shift gears now and deal with the second issue that I wanted to approach, and that is I wanted to offer a few thoughts on the big story, one of the big stories of last week, and that was the fire at the Notre Dame Cathedral. And again, I want to take a kind of a little different angle on it in that I want to draw some comparisons to. the Texas Receptus and attempts to reconstruct the text of scripture. That may seem like a stretch to you. Let me see if I can win you over to this as a thought experiment anyway. So one of the biggest news stories this past week was, of course, the fire that destroyed a substantial part of the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. That happened last Monday, April the 15th, Tax Day, and it was in the news a lot last week. The source of the fire is apparently still unexplained, although there have been lots of online rumors. that have run rampant about the possibility that it might have been an intentional act of arson or even of terrorism. I know even at the lunch table today at church some of the guys we were sitting around and talking and this came up and several of the guys who work in construction from our church were talking about how electricians always get blamed for things like this and but they were wondering how is it possible that they weren't there weren't some you know even, you know, non-liquid fire prevention, you know, protocols in place and stuff like that. But anyways, and then, of course, somebody pointed out that over the last year there have been Apparently been hundreds of acts of vandalism against French churches, against Christian religious objects. Of course, many churches are Catholic churches and many religious objects were statues of Mary and things like that. So there's been a lot of hostility toward Christianity. And I wrote these notes on Saturday. And then, you know, woke up this morning, looked at my newsfeed and saw the bombings that took place in Sri Lanka. And so other acts of hostility against Christianity. Interestingly enough, I had an invitation to go to Sri Lanka last summer in August, and I wasn't able to accept the invitation because of some previous commitments that I had. But I thought about the Christian community there. I think that the victims of the bombings were primarily Roman Catholic churches, but I know there are evangelicals, even some Reformed Baptistic congregations there where I had been invited to come. But anyway, anyways, so what happened to Notre Dame? hates to say that we have suspicions that it could have been an act of arson or terrorism. And it seems particularly, one would have to be, I think, be particularly dull not to be suspicious of the fact that this fire occurred during the so-called Holy Week leading up to Easter Sunday. And of course, we must always put in a note here saying, okay, I'm Reformed. I don't believe in Holy Week. And I don't believe that the Bible requires an Easter Sunday. Again, every Sunday is, should be a celebration of the gospel. Christ died for our sins. According to the scriptures, he was buried. He was raised again the third day, according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to his disciples. But again, it's not hard to see some suspicions about this. And it seems to be something that many in mainstream media don't seem willing to at least entertain and connect the dots or see it as possible. I can also see it could possibly have been purely an accidental fire. But anyways, that was a big, big item last week. And I think many people will see what happened to Notre Dame. It's a terrible image. I've only been in Paris once in my life, and that was about 30 years ago when I was a college student. I was in Paris and went into Notre-Domino, have a lot of memories of it, visited a lot of cathedrals and churches in Europe. But anyway, I remember it was a beautiful place and I explored the neighborhood around it. But anyways, I can see how many will see a lot of symbolic significance to this fire, to the damage done to the church. It was an icon of Paris and I think obviously because it was a church, it was a symbol of Christianity and in particular of the Roman Catholic heritage of France. When I saw it, I was wondering how many poems, essays will be written about this that will memorialize this fire and see it as a reflection of the demographic, political, religious changes. that are taking place in France and in Western Europe. Many are talking about Western Europe entering a post-Christian era. And I feel sure that in future anthologies of English poetry, there will be someone who will write a poem about the fire in Notre Dame and the ruins of the church. and it will be seen as symbolic of the failure or the decline of Christianity in the West. There was a much-discussed online article that was put out by Rolling Stone just the day after, I think it was on April the 16th, and I'll put a link to this. The article was titled, How Should France Rebuild Notre Dame, written by a journalist named E.J. Dixon. And reading this is really what prompted me to have this thought experiment or idea about drawing an analogy with the Texas Receptus. And in the article, he begins by pointing out that the fire didn't end up doing as much damage as some had initially feared. And he cites an art historian from Harvard named Jeffrey Hamburger. Love that name. And here's a paragraph from that article. It says, the fact that the building did not collapse, a concern in the hours immediately following the blaze, serves as a powerful testimony to the skill of medieval builders, Hamburger says. He credits the survival of the structure to the building's iconic rib vaulting and flying buttresses. which prevented collapse. It's worth remembering why they went to the trouble building it this way. It wasn't for aesthetic reasons. It was for fireproofing, Hamburger says. In a way, what we have here is proof of concept. That's the end of the quotation. And then he notes the building's role in French history and the fact that it serves as what he calls a point zero, or a supposed center for the city of Paris, a geographical center, a point zero. And then the article offers this sort of startling observation. I think this is probably what's been most talked about about this article as it's been shared and discussed. The quotation is this, but for some people in France, Notre Dame has also served as a deep-seated symbol of resentment, a monument to a deeply flawed institution and an idealized Christian European France that arguably never existed in the first place. And then there's a quotation. The building was so overburdened with meaning that its burning feels like an act of liberation, says Patricio del Real, an architecture historian at Harvard University. And that's the end of the paragraph. So that's kind of a stunning statement. people would have resentment toward the Notre Dame Cathedral and they see it's burning as an act of liberation. I don't think that's how many of us of various Christian persuasion see it, but anyways. This article also discusses the very difficult question of how the reconstruction of the cathedral should proceed. And this is what really caught my attention. They're debating how should the Notre Dame Cathedral be reconstructed once the fire cleanup happens. And I didn't know much about the history of it, but many of us have learned more about it obviously this week. The cathedral began to be built in the year 1160, and its completion took 100 years. It wasn't completed until the year 1260. And that's just a stunning in and of itself that they would take up a project to build something that would take a hundred years to complete. So there would be people who worked on it in the beginning who maybe they wouldn't see it completed and wouldn't be completed maybe till the time of their grandchildren. That tells you something about, again, having a long view on your work, your cultures, your society. It was also interesting to find out that the Notre Dame Cathedral, you know, built between 1160 and 1260, that it was built on a site that had previously held a fourth century Christian church. And that church had been built on a site where previously there had been a Roman temple to the god Jupiter. So you can go back to Roman France. When it was Gaul, there had been a Roman temple there. And then when Christianity prevailed, fourth century, a Christian church, the medieval era then Notre Dame Gothic Cathedral was built. And then, as this article points out and others have pointed out, over the years, actually, there have been various additions to the building. There have been various renovations. Most notably, there was a spire that was built in the 19th century. This was one of the iconic images from the fire as the spire burned and it collapsed and the metal covering over it was melted. And so now we've got the question of reconstruction. How should Notre Dame Cathedral be reconstructed? Should the people doing the reconstruction, should they try to take it back to the way it looked in 1260 when the project was first completed? I guess someone might say, why not take it back to the fourth century original church? Why not take it back to the Temple of Jupiter, someone might say. Or should it be as it was in the medieval period, 1260? Or should it be as it stood in April 2019 when it burned, so the spire of the 19th century should be replaced? Well, someone might say, should this opportunity be taken to modernize it? Should there be contemporary innovations and features? Should there be brick and plexiglass rather than mortar and stone? Should there be parts of the Pompidou Center incorporated into it, if you know that sort of modern architectural work that now is in Paris? Also, should that be done to it? And there's also just the realization, I think, that's reflected in the article and has been reflected by other people that it's going to be impossible to do an exact reproduction of Notre Dame as it was. For one thing, we simply do not have the skilled workmen and artisans who completed the original work by hand and used pre-modern methods. How did they hoist? those massive stones 200 feet in the air with no computers, with no engines. And we simply don't have people today who can do what those artisans did in between 1160 and 1260. Here's another quotation from the conclusion of the Rolling Stone article that I find to be fascinating. It's a little bit longer. Let me read all of this, and there are a quotation of several art historians. And there's kind of a debate about whether it should be modernized or whether it should be built maybe the way, you know, trying to restore it to the original, whether that's, again, 1260 or 2019. Now, so here's the quotation, although Macron, France's president, and donors like Pinot have emphasized that the cathedral should be rebuilt as close to the original as possible. Some architectural historians like Brigniani, and this is an architecture professor at the City College of New York, believe that would be complicated given the many stages of the cathedral's evolution. The question becomes, which Notre Dame are you actually rebuilding, he says? Harwood, who is an architecture professor at the University of Toronto, quoted in the article, too, believes that it would be a mistake to try to recreate the edifice as it once stood. as Le Duc did more than 150 years ago. So again, in the 19th century, there was an architect, Le Duc, who renovated Notre Dame. And this guy is saying you can't do what he did 150 years ago. You can't simply attempt to reconstruct it. So it continues. Any rebuilding should be a reflection not of an old France or the France it never was, a non-secular white European France, but a reflection of the France of today, a France that is currently in the making. The idea that you can recreate the building is naive. It is to repeat past errors, category errors of thought. And one has to imagine that if anything is done to the building, it has to be an expression of what we want, the Catholics of France, the French people want. What is an expression of who we are now? What does it represent? Who is it for, he says. So that's sort of the modern view. Again, he sounds like a postmodern scholar, doesn't he? It would be naive to think that we can reconstruct it. We would just repeat past errors, category errors of thought. And then there's sort of the conservative side is reflected in the Harvard historian, Hamburger. Here's another quote from the article. Hamburger, however, dismisses this idea as preposterous. Now that the full extent of the damage is being reckoned with and is less than many initially feared, he sees no reason to not try to rebuild and preserve one of the few remaining wonders of medieval architecture. It's not as if in rebuilding the church one is necessarily building a monument to the glorification of medieval Catholicism and aristocracy. It's simply the case that the building has witnessed the entire history of France as a modern nation, he says. You can't just erase history. It's there, and it has to be dealt with critically. That's the end of the quote. So again, it's a very interesting discussion about reconstruction. How do we reconstruct the Notre Dame de Paris, Our Lady of Paris? Again, I think it's an intriguing question on many levels. And it, of course, brought to my mind an analogy. that could be drawn to the whole issue of the text of Scripture. Are there parallels that might be suggested between what's happened in Notre Dame and the whole discussion about reconstruction of it and the traditional text of Scripture? By the traditional text of Scripture, I mean the Hebrew Masoretic text of the Old Testament, that text preserved by the Masoretic scribes, and the Greek Textus Receptus of the New Testament, first printed in the post-Reformation era, and which became the standard Greek text of the New Testament that was the basis for all the Protestant translations. The traditional text of scripture is not a physical edifice like Notre Dame. But it is a priceless literary artifact that reflects the history and heritage of Christianity, not only in the West, but also in the East. So one might say that Notre Dame was there for some 900 years. And someone might say, well, the traditional text, it's only there in the printed tradition for some 500 years. But even if we granted, OK, it only had a 500-year span, That in itself, of course, would be significant. But we can also say, well, wait a second. Its legacy goes even further back. The Masoretic text, some would say, goes back to Ezra. It goes back to the time of the exile and the compiling of the Old Testament scriptures, the collecting of them in the providence of God. The TR, the Texas Receptus, reflects a predominant organic ecclesiastical consensus largely present in the Byzantine Greek manuscript tradition and then confirmed by the Protestant Orthodox in the Reformation and the post-Reformation eras. And we can argue it goes back to the apostles. So whereas Notre Dame Cathedral had only a 900-year history with regard to the medieval church there, the traditional text we can say is a literary edifice that has stood for over 2,000 years. And so if I could continue this analogy, what happened to Notre Dame, this great artifact, this great monument? was severely damaged, and some would hold that the text of scripture has been severely damaged through blazing corruptions and errors in transmission from some unknown sources. In hindsight, however, many now fear that the damage might have been done from inside, by post-Enlightenment scholars who saw the traditional text as a monument to a bygone era whose significance was now eclipsed by the need for modern advances. Such scholars likely saw the traditional text as the historian in the Rolling Stone article says that some modern Parisians saw Notre Dame, they saw it with a deep-seated, Resentment, they saw it as a monument to a deeply flawed institution that arguably never existed in the first place. Many, no doubt, saw and still see the toppling of the traditional text of scripture as a form of liberation, just as the historian suggested that some saw the fire in the Notre Dame Cathedral as a form of liberation from the oppressive Christian past. Despite claims, however, of its total collapse, under what can only be described as the withering claims of modern criticism, further examination shows that the structure of the traditional text actually stands up quite well, a testimony to the proof of concept that not only existed in the inspired writers, but also in the providentially guided transmitters of the text. And we might say that despite its withering criticism that it has endured, it still serves quite well, quite adequately, as a point zero for finding the true center for Christian faith and practice, while some would still Suggests undertaking radical reconstruction to get back to the as yet undefined and elusive original. Others suggest that the moment is to be seized for making supposed modern updates and improvements. And so we see in the debate about Notre Dame Cathedral, some of the debates about the modern critical texts and whether its aim is to restore the original or whether its aim is to provide modern updates and improvements. To borrow again from a scholar in the article on Notre Dame, one might observe The question becomes, which text of Christian scripture are you actually rebuilding? So I find this to be a very interesting, again, thought experiment, drawing a parallel, an analogy between discussion of reconstruction of Notre Dame and modern attempts to reconstruct the text. In the end, the traditionalist, however, rightly recognizes that Such an undertaking to supposedly reconstruct scripture is fraught with difficulty and will yield unintended consequences. For starters, we simply do not have the artisans and skilled laborers to undertake successfully such a task. We don't have those men of the godly sort of a previous generation. We cannot do now what a previous generation so expertly did under divine providence. Our attempts to tinker with and improve the text might, in fact, be devastating for its preservation for future generations. Of course, this analogy between Notre Dame and the text of Scripture breaks down, because Notre Dame has indeed been severely damaged, and it will need to be repaired, and people will have to make choices about how that repair and reconstruction will take place. The traditional text of Scripture, however, though under intense assault, has not yet been consigned to the flames. To both the chagrin and wonder of many, it still stands as a literary monument, both to God's immediate inspiration of His word in the original languages, in Hebrew and Greek, and also to His providential preservation of that word in the opographs, in the copying of it. It does not need repair or replacement, But instead, we would suggest, those of us who affirm the confessional text or the traditional text, we would say it simply needs appreciation and admiration. So again, this is a bit of a thought experiment, some ideas, an analogy. that was spurred by the story that was in the news. Well, we've come to the end and I hope that you have enjoyed both the review of the New American Standard Bible update 2020 and this little analogy, these thoughts. on Notre Dame and reconstruction of the text. Hope this has been helpful. Hope you've enjoyed this Word magazine and I'll look forward to speaking to you in the next Word magazine. Until then, take care and God bless.