I want to give credit where credit is due, and it’s due to the New Revised Standard, Updated Edition.
This video won’t be long. I’m busy writing a new book for Zondervan Reflective, tentatively titled Words Gone Wrong: Bible Study Errors and How to Fix Them. Look for it in 2027 wherever yard sales discard boring, unread books with unfunny jokes whose main value is the sheer audacity of their ability to string together tired cliches. That’s what I’m aiming for in this new book. It’s exhausting work, but do you want to fly with the eagles or run with the lemmings?
I’m a little late to give this credit to the NRSVue, but I still feel compelled to do it. They listened to people like me who made good faith, detailed criticisms of their rendering of 1 Corinthians 6:9–10. I made my complaint as soberly as I knew how. I did a video and put an article out with TGC. I called for a small Bible translation freak-out, because I’ve done the homework on the Greek words for male homosexual practice that Paul uses, and the NRSVue was, I believe, simply wrong to read this way:
Do not be deceived! The sexually immoral, idolaters, adulterers, male prostitutes, men who engage in illicit sex, thieves, the greedy, drunkards, revilers, swindlers—none of these will inherit the kingdom of God.
Next to “male prostitutes” and “men who engage in illicit sex” there were footnote symbols in the first edition of the NRSVue. Each of them said the same thing: “Meaning of Gk uncertain.” I believe these renderings were both incorrect and that the meaning of the Greek words in question is not uncertain. Or not anywhere near uncertain enough to warrant the footnotes. For more on this, see two videos I made, links in the show notes. One is academic and lengthy; the other is briefer and more accessible.
But now for the credit: The errata list on the NRSVue website now revises the footnote for the second word at issue: “Meaning of Gk uncertain, possibly men who have sex with men.”
I, for my small part, am satisfied. Even without an update to the main translation, I am satisfied. I am sorry it took me almost a year to notice this. It was sent to me recently by a viewer. This new footnote tends to diminish the level of uncertainty communicated to Bible readers. This new note also tends to recast the NRSVue rendering as meaning “men who engage in illicit sex” with each other. This was an interpretation of that phrase that did not occur to me on many good-faith readings of the original NRSVue text, though I must mention that it did occur to a YouTube commenter or two.
I still get comments on those two videos—one on the NRSVue and one on the academic argument about the main Greek word at issue. Most of the comments I still get are from people insisting that Paul was not condemning faithful, monogamous homosexuality. A tiny few of those comments have been from very learned people. One of them especially was so detailed and knowledgeable that I admit I would have to do significant homework to go back and forth with this guy. I’ve done some serious homework; he’s done more. I do tend to think that he was leaning harder on history and I on biblical philology; I did not find him persuasive. But I’m not going to tell you that no serious work has been done on the affirming side. But I can speak with a clear conscience: my view is hard-won.
Now, intelligent people will always disagree about the Bible, until the last day. And maybe even after that. Who’s to say that Bible interpretation might not continue even in hell? I do not speak lightly here. Hell is real; Jesus talked about it. And some people go there because of the sins Paul condemns in 1 Corinthians 6:9–10, including male homosexuality. That’s why it’s important how we translate this verse: the gospel is, in a very real way, affected by our definition of sin.
I think I’d like to say back to some of the folks who defended the NRSVue’s first rendering in my YouTube comments: the committee who worked on the NRSVue straddled the border between evangelicalism and mainline Protestantism, but it was pretty clearly weighted toward the latter. These are theologically liberal people for whom social pressures definitely push toward the affirmation of LGBTQ practice. If even they see what Frederick W. Danker—the D in the BDAG Greek-English lexicon—if even they see what he sees, even as a possibility, then my basic argument is upheld. My basic argument was that Danker himself was not conservative, but that he saw Paul as condemning male homosexuality of all kinds. I have checked and checked and checked Danker’s lexicography on so many words over a quarter century, and he is brilliant. I hold him in the highest regard. He made a series of arguments in his entry for ἀρσενοκοίτης (arsenokoites), the main Greek word in question. You don’t have to be a conservative Christian to follow his arguments, arguments you can go through in my lengthy academic video. You can deny what Paul said; you can ignore it. At least for now. But I cannot regard it as truly honest to say that Paul was silent about homosexuality, or ignorant of monogamous varieties and only condemning exploitative ones. Have you not read?
When I engage in controversy, I like to go to official sources. I won’t report rumors I heard about what allegedly really happened on the NRSVue committee. I read very carefully through NT scholar Jennifer Knust’s defense of that choice; I listened to anything I could find from NRSVue translators, including a recent video interview featuring several of them. I did my best to engage fairly. Whether they’re aware of me or not I simply have no idea, though I did email Dr. Knust and I did get a brief, courteous reply. But they did what people like me worked hard in good faith to persuade them to do. I still don’t quite agree with their renderings, but I think the small freak-out can end. One reason for that is that the venerable KJV itself gave a very obscure translation, “abusers of themselves with mankind,” and we all managed to continue to understand as an English-speaking church that from Genesis 1 through Genesis 19 through Leviticus 18 through Romans 1, God’s holy word stands opposed to homosexual desire and practice.
It stands opposed to my sins, too, I hasten to add. I don’t face homosexual temptation; never have. But I can just never bring up this passage, or Romans 1, without thinking of the other sins Paul lists in the same contexts, sins that I do sometimes commit—from covetousness to envy to other things I’m embarrassed to list in public.
Such were some of you. That’s the hope of the gospel: I don’t have to sin. Every time I sin, I repent. Help me, God. Studying Greek words in Pauline vice lists is never a mere academic exercise for me. I want to avoid these sins, all sin. I love the Lord. Paul said that if I do, I should hate evil. And I start with my own.
Two more quick points:
- First, it’s poor sport to call out your theological opponent’s fouls but not their fixes. Often I wonder—and this goes far, far beyond theology—I wonder if some people online would be angry, like Jonah, if their opponents repented. They can’t give their opponents a millimeter, can’t even credit their self-corrections. That isn’t right. That’s uncharitable. If God marked iniquities like we do, who would stand?
- Second: I am still making no real comment about the quality of the rest of the NRSVue. I expect it to be mostly very good. The people who made it are serious; they are knowledgeable. (At least one of them, my acquaintance David deSilva, who has offered to endorse my Parallel KJV New Testament and asked me to track him down to make sure he does it, has also critiqued the NRSVue’s rendering of ἀρσενοκοίτης in 1 Cor 6:9–10.) I just haven’t really read this translation or worked with it. Right now I’m listening through The Message for the first time from beginning to end, and I’m reading through Bibliotheca for the first time, starting with the New Testament. I hope to have more thoughts on each for you in time. I’d have to read lots of the NRSVue before I’d be willing to speak about its general quality with any confidence and specificity.
Extra tidbits
I see confusion growing out there in the world regarding the New Testament’s condemnation of male and female homosexuality. Internet culture lives off of memes, and the meme I’m hearing now is that the word “homosexual” didn’t enter the Bible until 1946 (they’re speaking of the RSV New Testament), and that this somehow means opposition to homosexuality is an innovation.
As if Bible readers prior to that time couldn’t discern what was meant by “even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature” and “the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly.”
I’ve long appreciated the honesty of Luke Timothy Johnson, a liberal New Testament scholar:
I think it important to state clearly that we do, in fact, reject the straightforward commands of Scripture, and appeal instead to another authority when we declare that same-sex unions can be holy and good. We appeal explicitly to the weight of our own experience and the experience thousands of others have witnessed to, which tells us that to claim our own sexual orientation is in fact to accept the way in which God has created us.
It is matter of charity to assume that someone is sincere as long as you can; it is a matter of wisdom to recognize when people read disobediently.