Disagreements  concerning Bible translations arise almost completely from two areas of study. Unfortunately, many people confuse the two areas and the issues they involve. It is important to clearly define them.

1. Textual Disputes: Disagreements over what was originally written by the prophets and apostles. What did Jeremiah actually write? What words did John use to describe the Lord in John 1? Can we determine what Paul said when writing to the Philippians? These are textual issues, issues that go to the actual text of the Bible.
2. Translation Disputes: Disagreements over how to translate what was originally written by the prophets and apostles. The vast majority of the biblical text is without question when it comes to the original text. That is, we know beyond all reasonable doubt what was in the original writings of the biblical authors in the vast majority of cases. But there are still disputes over how to translate that established text into English or other languages.

This is an example of a textual dispute. The Greek text used by the KJV translators contained the phrase “on me” at John 6:47. The Greek texts used by modern translators do not contain the phrase at this point. I will discuss the reasons for this in later post. The main thaing to note is that this kind of dispute is based upon what the Greek and Hebrew texts, used as the basis of a particular tranlsation, actually say. The other kind of dispute, translational, can be illustrated by the citation of John 3:36:

In this case the Greek text that underlies the KJV reads the same as that used by the translators of the NASB. Hence this dispute centers on the proper way to translate and understand the Greek term rendered believeth in the KJV and obey in the NASB. The distinction between textual and translational issues is often lost in pro-KJVO writings, but as we shall see, it is vital that we distinguish between them.

President Barack Obama spoke last week at the National Prayer Breakfast about the need to return to civility and see God in the faces of our political opponents. The president is by and large a brilliant speaker that commands attention and speaks with seeming insight and intelligence.

I emphasize the word “seeming.” Whenever any politician calls for a return to the good old days when people were civil to each other, politically or otherwise, I strain to find the mythical world they are referring to where civility and manners once reigned. In American history there has never been such a time. Immediately after the American Revolution that established our sovereign nation (hardly a civil parting from the British) George Washington was universally beloved and elevated to the presidency, but even he faced ugly editorials and political back biting from supposed friends.

In the presidential election of 1800, Thomas Jefferson and his good friend and newspaper editor Benjamin Franklin Bache engineered one of the ugliest and politically divisive negative campaigns our country has ever seen in an effort to unseat John Adams. A campaign that seriously injured the relationship of the previous friends and permanently embittered Abigail Adams toward Jefferson. Our national debates have included rebellions, wars, physical attacks within the congressional halls, lies, scandals, thievery, marches, riots, protests, and espionage. When we were not busying ourselves fighting foreign powers we were domestically hashing out immigration, slavery, reconstruction, suffrage, prohibition, the great depression, civil rights, and abortion. None of those issues are identified by the incredible spirit of civility they fostered among the political opponents or the people in general.

So as heartfelt as his appeal for civility may seem, President Obama needs to be honest about what he wants. He wants political opponents and pundits to lay off his presidency. He does not mind people being stirred up on a grass roots level as his ascension to the highest office was accomplished by tapping into a strong dissatisfaction with politicians. His own grassroots movement was the great wind of change. The Tea Party’s grassroots movement is simple incivility.

The objector might say, “His campaign was built on hope and change and was not negative.” Well change from what? The bad guys that have ruined our country. The idiots who mismanaged our affairs. The evil “others” who messed all of this up and need to be removed. In order for candidate Obama to be a savior, there must be devils from which we need to be saved, and those are the “others” he so politely and routinely throws under the bus.

In the course of his speech, President Obama recalled the efforts of Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and William Wilberforce as examples of people who saw God in the faces of their enemies. Here is where President Obama’s delusion is most apparent. He is so eager to cast himself in the light of those great men and see similarities in the resistance they faced that he misses the common thread that unites them and excludes him. It certainly was not their shared civility and gift of articulation.

Those men are remembered in high esteem because they refused to compromise basic principles in relation to the equality and value of all human life. They faced down injustice with courage and strength in the face of resistance that was well beyond common political incivility in declaring a whole race of human beings as less important than another. We honor them because we understand that it would have been easier for them to care less, but that the particular evils that confronted each of them demanded people of strength be willing to commit themselves to opposing those evils. Whether by design or in the course of those unfolding events, these men joined their lives to the struggle for freedom and equality for all time.

You do not join the ranks of those men by passing legislation that any old democrat at any time would champion if they held the presidency. You do it by recognizing that injustice and inequality are still present today and that a group of human beings are currently the victims of terrible inhumanity. The unborn human beings that are destroyed and exploited today, like all the powerless before them, are in need of men and women of courage to stand up and seek the recognition of their basic humanity.

President Obama could fight for them, but he seems more interested in finding a path that is paved with civility and good feelings. Unfortunately, history tells us that informing a society that we are morally corrupt in our treatment of fellow human beings, especially when the morally abhorrent treatment itself provides a seeming personal benefit, is not likely to invite the civility and support of our opponents. Just ask Martin Luther King, Abraham Lincoln, and William Wilberforce.

Given President Obama’s track record on these issues, it would take one of the most startling political about faces ever witnessed to get him on the right side. This is a man who sees no contradiction in claiming that he is not qualified to address the humanity of unborn while implementing and supporting policy that expresses the most radical concepts of abortion on demand. That contradiction is maddeningly and obviously stupid. Such moral insensitivity is not likely to produce a man that will join the ranks of the great moral crusaders in history by confronting the great moral issue of our age while calling people to embrace what Lincoln referred to as the better angels of our nature.

“And Jabez was more honourable than his brethren; and his mother called his name Jabez, saying, Because I bare him with sorrow.” (1 Chronicles 4:9)

Though neither his parents nor descendants are included, the name of Jabez has apparently been inserted in the genealogical lists of 1 Chronicles because of a notable prayer of his. In spite of its seemingly selfish nature, his prayer was answered when he “called on the God of Israel, saying, Oh that thou wouldest bless me indeed, and enlarge my coast, and that thine hand might be with me, and that thou wouldest keep me from evil, that it might not grieve me!” (1 Chronicles 4:10).

The birth of Jabez had evidently been accompanied by some kind of pain or sorrow, for the name he was given means “to grieve.” Perhaps his brothers had been a grief to his mother in some way, and he wanted to compensate. Since the account does not elaborate, we don’t know the background.

In any case (precisely because we don’t know), it is doubtful whether this prayer should be taken as a model prayer for modern believers. The prayer taught by Jesus to His disciples when they asked Him to teach them provides a more certain guide (see Matthew 6:9-13; Luke 11:2-4).

In that prayer, the first request is not to “bless me” but rather “thy kingdom come” and then “thy will be done.” Neither did He tell us to pray for a larger “coast” (that is “territory”) but simply to provide “day by day our daily bread.”

Sometimes God does answer what may seem to be a selfcentered prayer, but there should always be a God-centered reason when we pray such a prayer, and Jabez no doubt had such a reason. We never want to have our prayers answered in the sense of Psalm 106:15 — God “gave them their request; but sent leanness into their soul.”