No Worse Than Any Other III: Luke 22:43-44

Continuing our examination of the textual basis for a number of Bible translations, we saw last time that the English Standard Version uses a substandard text in Mark 16:9-20. An interesting test for a Bible translation is Luke 22:43-44. This deals with Jesus' suffering in Gethsemane. Second-century anti-Christians like Celsus attacked Jesus for his conduct in Gethsemane which did not match Roman and Stoic ideals, as did the third-century critic Porphyry. Tertullian was embarrassed by it. Ambrose noted that Christians were uncomfortable with it. Epiphanius said that the discomfort was such that many Christians had removed the offending verses from their Bibles.

The second century authors Justin Martyr and Irenaeus knew the passage. The earliest manuscript of the text (0171 from the second century) includes it but fourth century manuscripts like Sinaiticus and Vaticanus omit it. Most Greek New Testaments also mark it as to be omitted. The best textual evidence, however, supports its inclusion. How do our selected versions treat the passage?

KJV: 43 And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.
44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

ESV:  43 And there appeared to him an angel from heaven, strengthening him.
 44 And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly; and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

NRSV:  43 Then an angel from heaven appeared to him and gave him strength.
 44 In his anguish he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood falling down on the ground.

NIV:  43 An angel from heaven appeared to him and strengthened him.
 44 And being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground. 

NLT:  43 Then an angel from heaven appeared and strengthened him.
 44 He prayed more fervently, and he was in such agony of spirit that his sweat fell to the ground like great drops of blood.

NKJV:  43 Then an angel appeared to Him from heaven, strengthening Him.
 44 And being in agony, He prayed more earnestly. Then His sweat became like great drops of blood falling down to the ground.

NIrV:  ⁴³ An angel from heaven appeared to Jesus and gave him strength. ⁴⁴ Because he was very sad and troubled, he prayed even harder. His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground.

In this case, all of the translations pass on the basis of the text they use. The NIrV, however, is not a particularly good translation of the Greek. Again, the King James Version is no worse than any other.

 
 

No Worse Than Any Other II: Mark 16:9-20

One of the common complaints that I hear about the King James Version is how poor its textual basis is. That is true. The textual basis of many of the other versions, however, is worse. Consider the ending of Mark. 

The Gospel of Mark has a number of endings in the manuscripts. Many prefer to follow the readings of Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the two earliest complete manuscripts of the New Testament. Both of these manuscripts are missing Mark 16:9-20. They are not, however, the earliest witnesses to the passage. That distinction belongs to Irenaeus. In his Contra Haeresis 3.10.5, Irenaeus quotes the beginning of the gospel and the end of the gospel (Mark 16:20). Elsewhere (Contra Haeresis 2.20.3) he quotes from Mark 16:17-18. Thus the entire long ending was known in the second century, which is much earlier than the fourth century manuscripts that omit it. So what verses of Mark 16:9-20 show up in our selection of translations?

KJV: 9-20

ESV: [[9-20]] (marked in double brackets indicating that it should be deleted)

NRSV: 9-20

NIV: 9-20

NLT: both shorter and longer versions given and marked.

NKJV: 9-20

NIrV: 9-20

 

In this case the English Standard Version uses an inferior text to the King James Version. For this passage, it is a worse translation. Sadly, the BYU New Testament Commentary also follows the inferior text. 

 

No Worse Than Any Other I: Leviticus 4:16

I am often asked to recommend my favorite Bible translation. I usually disappoint my interlocutors by telling them that the King James Version is no worse than any other. This series of posts is designed to illustrate my claims. As a foil, I decided to take the list of recommended English translations that the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently posted. The following are the recommended translations:

Ages 14 and Above

• English Standard Version (ESV)​
• New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)​

Ages 11–13

• New International Version (NIV)​
• New Living Translation (NLT)​
• New King James Version (NKJV)​

Ages 8 and Above

• New International Reader’s Version (NIrV)​

A number of years ago, I saw a book on finding Christ in the Old Testament. I had looked at the scriptural index to the book and noticed that while the author was pushing finding symbolic references to Christ, he had overlooked several explicit references. One of these is Leviticus 4:16. My personal favorite translation for this particular verse is the Septuagint:

Septuagint (LXX): καὶ εἰσοίσει ὁ ἱερεὺς ὁ χριστὸς ἀπὸ τοῦ αἵματος τοῦ μόσχου εἰς τὴν σκηνὴν τοῦ μαρτυρίου
And the priest, the Christ, shall bring from the blood of the bull to the tent of the witness. 

King James Version (KJV): And the priest that is anointed shall bring of the bullock’s blood to the tabernacle of the congregation:

English Standard Version (ESV): Then the anointed priest shall bring some of the blood of the bull into the tent of meeting,

New Revised Standard Version (NRSV): The anointed priest shall bring some of the blood of the bull into the tent of meeting,

New International Version (NIV): Then the anointed priest is to take some of the bull’s blood into the Tent of Meeting.

New Living Translation (NLT): The high priest will then take some of the bull’s blood into the Tabernacle,

New King James Version (NKJV): The anointed priest shall bring some of the bull’s blood to the tabernacle of meeting.

New International Reader’s Version (NIrV): Then the anointed priest must take some of the bull’s blood into the tent of meeting.

The Septuagint explicitly identifies the priest in the sin offering with Christ. None of the translations listed do. The King James Version, however, is no worse than any of the others. If one is interested in a different translation to help find Christ in the Old Testament, none of these translations will help.

 

 

Jeffrey R. Holland (1940-2025)

I have known Jeffrey R. Holland for over two-thirds of my life, and just over half of his. It is hard to express what a good friend he has been to me. A few years ago, he sent me a very kind note, out of the blue, just before a very difficult time. Before another very difficult time, he personally gave me some reassurance that helped with what, unbeknownst to him, would happen.

I first met President Holland (and he will always be that to me) because my mother, looking through the course offerings at BYU said that if Jeffrey Holland was teaching a class, I should enroll in it, even if I did care for the subject.

President Holland was a fantastic teacher. When I first entered his literature class, I hated the subject. That I did not at the end is a testament to his teaching ability. We even asked if he would make up the classes that he had to miss. He was sincere when he said that he hoped to retire from being a university president to become a college professor. The Lord, however, had other things in mind.

I remember that President Holland took time out of his busy schedule as president of a large university to let a student tell him about his mission call. While on my mission, there were many General Authorities called who were then serving as mission presidents. There were two vacancies in the Quorum of the Twelve at the time, and speculation was rampant among the missionaries in my mission that our mission president would be called as one of the next apostles. No question my mission president was a great man, but I had had a class from President Holland, and I said that although I did not think our mission president would become an apostle, I think I had met someone who would one day be one. It is the only time I have ever been right about such things.

President Holland was always extremely busy and anxiously engaged. I remember once when he met with my wife and me, he said that it was the first bit of free time that he had had that month. It was the last day of the month. From that I drew an important lesson. Apostles are special ambassadors of the Lord Jesus Christ in all the world. Do not waste their time! I hope I did not.

I lost a number of my professors last year, but I miss President Holland already the most. 

 

 

Kenneth A. Kitchen (1932-2025)

I note with sadness the passing of Kenneth Kitchen, an extraordinary Egyptologist and individual. Kitchen was phenomenally prolific, an into almost every facet of the ancient Near East. His Ramesside Inscriptions alone would have secured the reputation for an Egyptological career, but Kitchen also produced hefty monographs on South Arabian Inscriptions, a collection of all the treaties and law collections of the ancient Near East (Treaty, Law, and Covenant), sorting out the Third Intermediate Period, and numerous other works.

As a scholar Kitchen was known not only for his meticulous scholarship, but for having strong opinions strongly, bluntly, and vividly expressed. These opinions were not always appreciated but Kitchen had paid the price to have them.

I had the privilege of meeting Kitchen at the Third Intermediate Period conference in Leiden. He was kind and patient with me and let me hang around him through the conference. It was worth sitting a few seats away from him so as to catch his running commentary throughout the proceedings. He would audibly interject comments like "Utter rubbish!" in the middle of presentations. He gave the keynote address of the conference. An hour and a half summary of the chronological basis of the entire Third Intermediate Period with reference to all the primary sources, given from memory without notes. At the end of the conference, he gave a summary of all the presentations extemporaneously, again without notes, with comments about what he could agree with and what he could not.

That was Kitchen as a scholar. As a person, he showed sides that did not always show up in his scholarship. One of his students told me that Kitchen was always a good Christian gentlemen. One day, one of the female students provocatively showed up to class in a diaphanous top, so Kitchen paced the class giving his lecture staring at the floor. I heard another story firsthand from a colleague who found out that Kitchen had been praying for him, unbeknownst to him at the time.

 

Marcel Sigrist (1940-2024)

I sadly just learned about the death of the notable Sumerologist, Marcel Sigrist. Sigrist was one of my professors in graduate school. Sigrist was already legendary at that time, having produced a substantial output of useful works. Sigrist always encouraged me to get more involved in Sumerian studies. He took me around the first Rencontre Assyriologique that I attended. I loved working with him.

I remember one time, sitting in the study room adjacent to the Babylonian collection in Sterling Library at Yale halfway through the semester when he was a visiting scholar. Sigrist came in to me all apologetic, saying: "I'm so sorry. I thought Jean-Guy was your first name."

 I will miss him.

 

Bezalel Porten (1931-2025)

I was saddened to hear today of the passing of Bezalel (Buzzy) Porten.

I first encountered Porten's work in a very early article that he wrote using Aramaic documents from Elephantine to sketch out the layout of a neighborhood in Elephantine. It was a brilliant piece of work, one that later enabled the archaeologists to identify some of the very structures that he had mapped out.

Later, when finishing my dissertation at Yale, Porten came to be a visiting scholar teaching the Elephantine texts and let me sit in on his class. When I had finished work on my dissertation and was waiting for its approval, Porten invited me to co-author an article on Aramaic funerary texts from Egypt because he wanted an Egyptologist to help. Porten was a meticulous and exacting co-author who was very particular about what he wanted. I learned much about Aramaic speakers in Egypt and how Egyptian religious formulas were translated into Aramaic. For me, however, our most exciting discovery was that the author of the Aramaic dedication on an altar from the Serapeum at Memphis was not a native Aramaic speaker, though his father, to whom he dedicated the inscription, was. We know this because some of the letters were backwards (typical of those who are new to and unfamiliar with an alphabet) and because he used the wrong tense in Aramaic to translate an Egyptian religious expression. We never would have noticed those details had Buzzy not insisted that we look at the original (or at least a hand copy) and had been a stickler for Aramaic grammar.

I had many other encounters with Buzzy over the years. Once about a proposed joint project on Idumean ostraca that never materialized but which Buzzy brought to fruition by himself (with his longtime collaborator, Ada Yardeni). Most of the time, we met at the national meetings of the Society of Biblical Literature. Buzzy was always excited to see me. He was also willing to discuss problems in the field with me, such as what the Idumean ostraca were and what social situation produced him. When I did not see him last year in San Diego, I missed him.

Though Buzzy moved easily in the scholarly world, he was a religious man. He had memorized the Tanakh and would quote it from memory and comment on it when necessary. He also used to belong to a group that read the Targums together. I remember that he assumed that all Jews were good Jews, even anciently. If someone with an Aramaic name, gave their child a name with a pagan deity as part of the name, they must not have been Jewish. Only when the evidence was incontrovertible would he consider the other alternative, which, to his credit, he did.

When Buzzy reached the other side, there were probably a crowd of people, whose story he brought to light, there to welcome him. Buzzy, if he cares about that any more, can now find out from the scribes of the Idumean ostraca, what exactly they were doing.

Rest in peace, my friend. May his memory be a blessing.