Proclaimer Blog
Why Bibles make me see red
Just getting round to buying a print edition of the new NIV. I'm not persuaded by the negative publicity that surrounds it – not yet, anyway. But reading through the NIV catalogue from Zondervan I see that of about 400 editions, only five are not red letter Bibles – and those are hefty 12pt mamas. It would be a great irony if the new 2011 NIV was killed off not by the revised text but by a flawed typography. For all the words of the Bible are the words of Jesus.
Red-letter Bibles are neither necessary nor helpful for finding the words of Jesus
The obvious – but wrong – answer to the question of where we find Jesus’ words today is, “Well, of course, we can read them in the red parts of a red-letter Bible!” But this is misleading, for at least three simple practical reasons.
First, the red words are not in the original language that Jesus spoke. They have been translated from Greek, and even the Greek is most unlikely to have been the exact words his spoke, since he seems usually at least, to have taught in Aramaic. We know this from the few occasions when the precise Aramaic words have been preserved – “Abba”, “Talitha cumi”, “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani”. But apart from these, even if we read the New Testament in Greek, we cannot have access to the precise and actual words that Jesus spoke.
Second, there are no speech marks in the Greek manuscripts. Our translators – generally helpfully – add them in to make it easier for us to read. But there are times when we cannot tell when the direct speech of Jesus ends and the comments of one of the gospel-writers begins. The most famous of these is John 3:16-21. Jesus begins speaking in verse 10, and the context makes it clear that his direct speech continues at least to verse 15. But it is quite likely that verses 16-21 are the comment of John the gospel-writer rather than the direct speech of Jesus. So we cannot even tell if the most famous verse in the Bible (John 3:16) was spoken by Jesus or by John!
Third, it is clear by comparing parallel passages, especially in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, that the gospel-writers summarise and paraphrase what Jesus said (as well as putting it into Greek, as we have seen).
For these three practical reasons, we do not and cannot have access – except in a few exceptional cases – to the precise words spoken by Jesus such as might in principle have been preserved by a voice recorder. Indeed, as we shall see, this is a good thing. For if we could, then our doctrine of scripture would be essentially the same as the Muslim understanding of the Qu’ran, and to read the Bible it would be essential to understand Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek. It would presumably also be forbidden to translate the Bible into any other language. One Muslim scholar asks precisely this question: “Would Christian theology be willing to say that the discourse of Jesus Christ in Aramaic (and not Greek; the distinction is important) at a precise time and in a precise place on earth is related to God the Father as the Qu’ranic discourse in Arabic transmitted by Muhammad is related to the Archetype [or “Mother”] of the Book retained in the presence of God transcendent?” Happily for Christians, the answer is no. Christian theology has never shared with Muslim theology a “dictation theory” of inspiration, that there is a divine “Archetype” transmitted to a Prophet on earth and then recorded verbatim in a book. (This is of course why the Qu’ran ought properly to be studied in Arabic and not in translation.)
So – paradoxically – red-letter Bibles encourage an understanding of the Bible that is more Muslim than Christian. It would be good if publishers ceased to print them. They certainly do not help us in our search to hear the words of Jesus Christ today. Happily, as we shall see in this chapter and chapter 4, we are able to hear the words of Jesus Christ with utter faithfulness in all the words of the New Testament, not just those printed in red.