Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."

Scripture Translations At Mass

A reader writes:

Prof. Dr. Jimmy:

If you’ve addressed this before, then my profuse apologies.

Question, Short Form:  Is the NAB the only Bible from which readings at Mass may be used?

Answer, Short Form: Technically, no, but you’re not going to have much of a chance of getting another used, at least in the U.S.

Question, Longer Form:  As we all (that is, we being, well, we) recognize, the NAB is, to put it nicely, just somewhat lacking when it comes to translational accuracy; or, as Butthead once said, "This sucks more than anything that has ever sucked before."  Given either premise, is substitution allowed?  Specifically for the Torah, I have in mind Everett Fox’s ‘The Schocken Bible, Vol. I.’  While I am aware that it, too, has some problems, at least it seems to attempt to adhere to the poetic nature and intent of the early Hebrew writers.

Answer, Longer Form: Technically, the lectionary promoted by the USCCB is not simply based on the NAB. Parts of it are based on the NAB, but parts are based on an edited form of the Revised NAB, so what we have is a kind of patchwork lectioary composed from different sources. As has been pointed out, you cannot buy a Bible that has in it what the lectionary has in it. This is because of the unique redactional history of the current lectionary.

That being said, I would agree that the lectionary leaves much to be desired in the translational accuracy department and in the literary style department. Though the phrase is cute, I wouldn’t go so far as to agree with the literary character you mention who described it as "sucking more than anything has sucked before." I would apply that term to the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World "Translation," which is truly skin-peelingly bad.

Years ago there were permissions given for lectionaries based on other Scripture translations–the Jerusalem Bible and the Revised Standard Version (not the NRSV), as I recall correctly–and it was suggested that when the current lectionary came out that these permissions would get yanked, but as far as I know, they haven’t been, and so these lectionaries would technically still be permitted. There’s also a Lectionary for Masses with Children based on the Contemporary English Version.

The Shocken Bible’s version of the Torah, however, was never one of those approved versions.

The odds of getting an approved lectionary that isn’t the standard one used in a typical parish setting in the U.S. are very, very low. The current Lectionary for Mass published by the USCCB is the only one being promoted and the only approved one likely to be used.

If you’re interested in seeing how other English-speaking countries do things in this regard

LOOK HERE.

Just Imagine . . .

Yesterday I posted a query asking why we should fill up our imaginations with fiction: visions of ways God didn’t make the world.

Earlier today I posted a note that Jesus himself used fictions, therefore they must (in at least some circumstances) be okay to use.

Having established that, I’d like to go into the speculative basis of why they are okay to use.

Because fiction is such a part of our lives, many folks might pass quickly over the question of why we should do fiction at all and not register the full force of the question. For that reason, I tried to phrase the question as strongly as I could, even using prejudicial language and talking about "filling up our imaginations" with how "God didn’t make the world."

The first of these phrases makes it sound as if we’re cramming our minds full of fiction so that there’s no room left for anything else. In some cases, that may be true. Some people live in fantasy worlds, either in the sense of spending an unhealthy amount of time on fiction (like the Star Trek fans satirized in William Shatner’s famous "Get A Life!" sketch on SNL) or in the sense of being literally unable to distinguish fantasy from reality (in which case the person is clinically psychotic).

Those conditions represent the abuse of the imagination (in the case of obsessive fandom) or an outright mental illness (as in the case of psychotics). But just because a faculty can be disordered doesn’t mean that the faculty itself should not be part of human life.

In point of fact, it seems that coming up with fiction is something that is part of human nature. If it wasn’t for Jesus’ use of fiction, one could always say "Well, that’s just because of the Fall," but the phenomenon of storytelling is a true human universal. Every society has fiction, and that’s a pretty good clue that it’s something built into human nature.

The ostensible opposition between our imaginations and how God didn’t make the world is also prejudicial language.

After all: What does one suppose our imaginations are for, anyway? The whole point of an imagination is being able to envision how the world might be but isn’t–at least at present.

It’s true that we can use our imaginations to try to reconstruct the way that the world was or the way it might be right now in areas out of our sight, but one of its principal functions–and very likely its main function–is to enable us to model how the future might go. This allows us to plan, to envision how we’d like the world to be and then determine what’s the best way to move the world in that direction.

What will happen if I ask my boss for a raise? What arguments will be most effective in getting me one? Will this girl agree to marry me? How can I increase my chances of getting her to say yes? How can I get the baby to stop screaming at the top of his lungs? How can I get Fr. to end this liturgical abuse? Etc., etc., etc.

All of these are questions that involve envisioning the world a way it isn’t now. We may be using our imaginations in these cases to figure out how to change the world, but the point is that our imagination is still bound up, part and parcel, with the idea of fiction. Trying out fictions of how the world might be is what the imagination is for.

A person without the ability to engage the faculty of fiction has a broken imagination, and that’s all there is to it.

That’s only one reason why fiction is important, though.

More to come.

A Knock-Down Blow

Let me give you what I consider to be a knock-down blow for the hypothesis we considered earlier that we shouldn’t be filling up our imaginations with fiction–imaginings of the way the world ain’t. I’ll offer additional arguments tomorrow (and I’m sure others will or by the time you read this already have offered them in the comboxes), but this one I consider a clincher:

Jesus used fiction.

If you think about it, that’s what his parables are: They’re short fictions.

When he starts talking about a man who went away on a journey and entrusted his property to his servants, it would be a mistake for someone in his audience to yell out "What was his name?!"

Someone actually does do that in Monty Python’s The Life Of Brian when Brian tries to tell a parable, but it’s missing the point. It’s a mistake.

It would be even more of a mistake to try to find out when and where the guy lived in history. When Jesus says things like this, he doesn’t have particular historical individuals in mind (so far as we know).

As a result, his parables are fictions. They may teach truths about the world, but the contain elements that aren’t the way the world is (or was or will be).

And if Jesus can use fiction . . . then so can we.

What's The Point?

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you would have any insight into the contradictory translations of Isaiah 63:9 in the RSV-CE and the NAB.

While taking a class on the theology of the Holy Spirit, I came across the fact that this verse is rendered differently in the two Catholic translations:

Isaiah 63:9 (RSV-CE)

In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9 (NAB)

in their every affliction.

It was not a messenger or an angel,

but he himself who saved them.

Because of his love and pity

he redeemed them himself,

Lifting them and carrying them

all the days of old.

In the RSV it was the angel that saved them; in the NAB is was not an angel.

A book used heavily in the class was The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition by Fr. George T. Montague.   Fr. Montague makes a passing reference (on page 54) to the verse:

"…depending on how the identical Hebrew letters are pointed, one can derive the [opposite] translation…"

I was wondering how Hebrew works, such that you can get an opposite translation from the same characters, differently "pointed."

Sure, no problem. First, take a look at this Hebrew word:

This is the word B’reshit, which is the Hebrew equivalent of "Genesis." It’s pronounced something like "bray-SHEET."

It’s the first word in the book of Genesis, and it’s customarily translated into English as "In the beginning."

Now, the thing about the Hebrew writing system is that it developed over time, and originally it didn’t have any vowels, just consonants.

In modern Hebrew script, the consonants are written in the large, black blocky letters that you see here. Originally, b’reshit would have simply been written B-R-SH-T (only in Hebrew letters). If you were an ancient Hebrew, you would have relied on your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary and context to figure out what words you were looking at in the text from just the consonants.

KND F TH WY Y CN WTH THS TXT.

Only they didn’t have spaces between written words then, either, so it all would have run together.

Over time, the Hebrews noted something about writing their text this way with only consonants.

It sucked.

So they started coming up with different ways to indicate what vowels ought to go into words. One of the first attempts was to impress certain consonants into doing double duty, so sometimes they represented consonants and sometimes they represented vowel sounds. Kind of like our letter Y, which can be either a consonant or a vowel.

That happens in Hebrew, too. In b’reshit the next to last letter (starting from the right) is a yod, which can be either a Y or an I sound. Here, it’s an I, though it sounds like a long-E (as in "sheet’).

These double-duty consonants made it much easier to figure out how to read texts, and so they became known as "the mothers of reading" (Latin: matres lectionis). 

Unfortunately, there were only four maters, and they didn’t help enough, so the scribes set about coming up with real vowels.

Instead of coming up new blocky letters to put in the middle of words, they decided to rely on little dots, like the ones you see under several of the letters in b’reshit. (Arabic and Aramaic use similar systems of little marks above and below their consonants, too.)

For example, under the second letter (counting from the right) of b’reshit has a couple of dots under it that look like a colon laying on its side. That’s the mark for a long-A vowel sound. (The A-sound in "bray-SHEET.")

Over time, they also came up with spaces between words (as you’d see in a modern Hebrew Bible) and other marks to help the reader out. For example, in the first letter of b’reshit there is a dot right in the middle of the letter. This is because the letter can be pronounced either B or V, but the dot tells you to pronounce it B.

Similarly, there is a dot over the right hand side of the fourth letter, which looks kind of like a stylized W. This letter can be pronounced either S or SH. If you put a dot over its left side, it’s S, but if you put the dot over its right side (as here) then it’s SH.

The guys who came up with these marks were known as the Masoretes, and they didn’t finish their work until the Renaissance, giving us the fully-marked or Hebrew Bible called the "Masoretic Text." Since the marks are (mostly) dots, the process of adding to a Hebrew text is called "pointing" it.

Pointed texts are much easier to read, but they are harder to write, and so today in Israel newspapers, street signs, and books are commonly written in unpointed form. Texts where getting the exact reading correct–like the Bible–are written in pointed form to eliminate ambiguity.

As you can imagine, there can be considerable ambiguity without the vowels, spaces, and other marks. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence can change dramatically or even reverse itself without these to help us along.

Unfortunately, the Masoretes were not (despite some claims otherwise) divinely inspired in their readings, and so it is possible for them to have gotten things wrong, and a translator who doesn’t simply accept the reading they gave a word will have to make a choice about how it should be understood.

That’s what’s happening in the case of Isaiah 63:9.

As you can see, there is a disagreement with the RSV translators and the NAB translators. I haven’t looked it up, but my guess is that the RSV is going with the Masoretic reading and the NAB is going with an alternate reading.

What’s The Point?

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you would have any insight into the contradictory translations of Isaiah 63:9 in the RSV-CE and the NAB.

While taking a class on the theology of the Holy Spirit, I came across the fact that this verse is rendered differently in the two Catholic translations:

Isaiah 63:9 (RSV-CE)
In all their affliction he was afflicted, and the angel of his presence saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old.

Isaiah 63:9 (NAB)
in their every affliction.
It was not a messenger or an angel,
but he himself who saved them.
Because of his love and pity
he redeemed them himself,
Lifting them and carrying them
all the days of old.

In the RSV it was the angel that saved them; in the NAB is was not an angel.

A book used heavily in the class was The Holy Spirit: Growth of a Biblical Tradition by Fr. George T. Montague.   Fr. Montague makes a passing reference (on page 54) to the verse:

"…depending on how the identical Hebrew letters are pointed, one can derive the [opposite] translation…"

I was wondering how Hebrew works, such that you can get an opposite translation from the same characters, differently "pointed."

Sure, no problem. First, take a look at this Hebrew word:

BereshitThis is the word B’reshit, which is the Hebrew equivalent of "Genesis." It’s pronounced something like "bray-SHEET."

It’s the first word in the book of Genesis, and it’s customarily translated into English as "In the beginning."

Now, the thing about the Hebrew writing system is that it developed over time, and originally it didn’t have any vowels, just consonants.

In modern Hebrew script, the consonants are written in the large, black blocky letters that you see here. Originally, b’reshit would have simply been written B-R-SH-T (only in Hebrew letters). If you were an ancient Hebrew, you would have relied on your knowledge of Hebrew vocabulary and context to figure out what words you were looking at in the text from just the consonants.

KND F TH WY Y CN WTH THS TXT.

Only they didn’t have spaces between written words then, either, so it all would have run together.

Over time, the Hebrews noted something about writing their text this way with only consonants.

It sucked.

So they started coming up with different ways to indicate what vowels ought to go into words. One of the first attempts was to impress certain consonants into doing double duty, so sometimes they represented consonants and sometimes they represented vowel sounds. Kind of like our letter Y, which can be either a consonant or a vowel.

That happens in Hebrew, too. In b’reshit the next to last letter (starting from the right) is a yod, which can be either a Y or an I sound. Here, it’s an I, though it sounds like a long-E (as in "sheet’).

These double-duty consonants made it much easier to figure out how to read texts, and so they became known as "the mothers of reading" (Latin: matres lectionis). 

Unfortunately, there were only four maters, and they didn’t help enough, so the scribes set about coming up with real vowels.

Instead of coming up new blocky letters to put in the middle of words, they decided to rely on little dots, like the ones you see under several of the letters in b’reshit. (Arabic and Aramaic use similar systems of little marks above and below their consonants, too.)

For example, under the second letter (counting from the right) of b’reshit has a couple of dots under it that look like a colon laying on its side. That’s the mark for a long-A vowel sound. (The A-sound in "bray-SHEET.")

Over time, they also came up with spaces between words (as you’d see in a modern Hebrew Bible) and other marks to help the reader out. For example, in the first letter of b’reshit there is a dot right in the middle of the letter. This is because the letter can be pronounced either B or V, but the dot tells you to pronounce it B.

Similarly, there is a dot over the right hand side of the fourth letter, which looks kind of like a stylized W. This letter can be pronounced either S or SH. If you put a dot over its left side, it’s S, but if you put the dot over its right side (as here) then it’s SH.

The guys who came up with these marks were known as the Masoretes, and they didn’t finish their work until the Renaissance, giving us the fully-marked or Hebrew Bible called the "Masoretic Text." Since the marks are (mostly) dots, the process of adding to a Hebrew text is called "pointing" it.

Pointed texts are much easier to read, but they are harder to write, and so today in Israel newspapers, street signs, and books are commonly written in unpointed form. Texts where getting the exact reading correct–like the Bible–are written in pointed form to eliminate ambiguity.

As you can imagine, there can be considerable ambiguity without the vowels, spaces, and other marks. Sometimes the meaning of a sentence can change dramatically or even reverse itself without these to help us along.

Unfortunately, the Masoretes were not (despite some claims otherwise) divinely inspired in their readings, and so it is possible for them to have gotten things wrong, and a translator who doesn’t simply accept the reading they gave a word will have to make a choice about how it should be understood.

That’s what’s happening in the case of Isaiah 63:9.

As you can see, there is a disagreement with the RSV translators and the NAB translators. I haven’t looked it up, but my guess is that the RSV is going with the Masoretic reading and the NAB is going with an alternate reading.

The Way The World Ain't

Recently I was talking with a friend who mentioned to me that she’s seen only one of the Star Wars films. She saw the first one when it first came out back in 1977 and never watched another.

Why?

Because she had recently converted to Christianity from another religion and, as a zealous new Fundamentalist (she’s now a Catholic), she was horrified by the alien creatures in the film.

"I wanted to get up in front of the screen and shout ‘God didn’t make these!‘" she told me.

While she now recognizes that the mere depiction of alien beings isn’t inherently sinful, she still doesn’t particularly enjoy sci-fi, and part of the reason why is that God didn’t make creatures like what you see in the movies–at least so far as we’re aware at this point.

I’ve had other friends express similar reservations about sci-fi. They just can’t relate to the alien creatures or situations that one often finds in it, and sometimes they also point to the fact that God didn’t make the world the way that it’s depicted in sci-fi.

I’m sympathetic to this. I’m a sci-fi fan, but I’m still sympathetic.

From one perspective, I’m sympathetic to it on an emotional level. Humans have emotional comfort zones regarding what they want to experience. If our experiences are too strange, too alien, too outside-our-comfort-zones then we get . . . uncomfortable. For most people, just looking at the Star-Nosed Mole (something God did create!) is enough to give them the willies.

If science fiction gives some folks an outside-the-comfort-zone experience and makes them uncomfortable, I respect that. That’s not where my comfort zones are set, but I have such zones just like everyone else, and some forms of fiction I find distasteful and, therefore, I avoid them.

That’s a matter of taste, though, not of principle.

I’m also sympathetic to my friends’ theological concern, for I had the same concern back when I was an Evangelical. Much as I liked science-fiction, I wondered about a form of entertainment that depicts the world in a way that God didn’t make it.

After all, one could argue, if God chose to make the world this way and not that way, why should we spend time filling our imaginations with the way the world ain’t?

I realized, though, that this objection got at a principle that affected a lot more literature than just science fiction. It also affected fantasy, of course, and imaginative fiction generally. But it still affected yet more.

It affected fiction itself.

There are distinctions to be made between different kinds of fiction (fantasy, sci-fi, realistic, detective, romance, western, etc.). They all obey different rules and depart in different ways from the way the world actually is. But all forms of fiction depart in some way from the way that God made the world.

That’s why we call it fiction. . . . It’s the way the world ain’t . .  stories that aren’t true.

Sci-fi and fantasy may (sometimes) break laws of nature that apply to the real world. Detective stories, romances, and westerns may all be written according to formulas that involve wildly improbably events that seldom happen–at least in conjunction with each other–in the real world. But even the most realistic story (or what in a typical English department would be considered a realistic story) involves envisioning the world a way that it isn’t.

So the objection can be posed even to realistic narratives: Why should we fill up our imaginations with material about the world the way God didn’t make it?

It’s a question worth considering.

There are good answers to it, and in upcoming posts I’ll share with you what I take to be some of those answers, but for now why not contemplate the problem?