As I commented in my last post, I was absolutely clueless when I came across “Scythians” in Colossians 3:11.  I went straight to a few commentaries to find out what relevance the Scythians had to Paul’s discussion, and decided to translate it as a paraphrase.  In this post, I want to take a look at the verse as it really is and give an explanation for what it means.  Here it is with the two preceding verses:

“Do not lie to one another, since you have stripped off the old man with his practices and have clothed yourselves with the new man which is being renewed into a knowledge according to the image of the one who created it, where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free, but Christ is all and in all.”
Colossians 3:9-11, verse 11 bold.

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I am officially two-thirds of the way through Colossians!

I did not put up a post when I finished chapter 2, but it is finished. I would especially like some thoughts on chapter 2 because I’m not quite happy with my translation yet- but at the same time I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly I’m not satisfied with.

Also, I have translated chapter 3 through verse 11.  If you are reading through my translation, I want some feedback particularly on verse 11 which says “where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave, or free…” To be honest, I had absolutely no idea what a Scythian was so I went to O’Brien, Wright, and Robertson’s Word Pictures.  I figured that most people would also be clueless as to what Paul’s point is by including “barbarian, Scythian…” which was actually a very strong, and clear, point to the original audience.   In order to get  Paul’s point across I decided to go with a paraphrase here: “cultural barriers” (I will have an upcoming post that will be an exposition of Col 3:11, where I hope to bring this idea out more fully). In order to make the rest of the verse flow, I paraphrased it as: “where there are no racial distinctions, cultural barriers, or class distinctions” with a footnote that quotes the actual translation.  Let me know what you think.

I was tagged by TC for this meme. Here are the rules:

” 1. Be contemporary

2. Be idiomatic and free as possible.

3. Parsing is optional. “

Here is my stab at it:

“Since you have shared in Christ’s resurrection, you should seek out the heavenly things because that is where Christ is- ruling over his kingdom with power and authority. Always keep your focus on the things of Christ, and not worldly things, because you have died to those things and your new life has been hidden with Christ in God. When Christ is gloriously revealed, so too will your identity as Christ’s be revealed along with him.”

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One of the interesting aspects of translating the New Testament is when you come across passages that are quite poetic in nature. Two of the most well-known passages that fit this description are the “Christ-hymns,” so-called because they appear to be an ancient hymn that was sung by the Church, even predating Paul’s own writings. These hymns appear at Colossians 1:15-20 (see my translation here), and Philippians 2:5-11. One of the questions that will creep into the minds of translators is essentially, “Ok, so how do we handle this?”  In other words, do we attempt the capture the poetical nature of the passage? Do we translate it as is, but set it apart with indentions to show that it was a hymn? Of course, there’s no right way to do this, and it comes down to a matter of preference. Personally, I enjoy both, for differing reasons.

The ISV (International Standard Version, NT finished, OT almost finished) has decided to translate these (and other) passages according to literary genre.  This means that not only is the text indented to show that it is poetry- it is translated as poetry itself.  In order to give some of you who might have read such a translation before a chance to see it, I will quote the passage from the ISV (note the triplet structure), a basic translation, and from the Greek for those who like to compare.

So what do you guys think? As far as literary style and form goes, I love the ISV’s rendering. The only problem I have with it is that the ISV went with the traditional rendering of ἁρπαγμὸν (harpagmon), “grasped,” which doesn’t really convey the meaning of the word well to modern ears. As I show in my translation, it is actually along the lines of having an advantage over. It’s understandable, of course. I wouldn’t want to have to try and fit that into meter.

Seeing as how I’m a seminary student I’m sure that many will find my answer to this question ‘biased.’ I think, however, that if you read this honestly you will see that I have tried to keep any biases out. In fact, at the end I will spell out my biggest problem with seminary.

The short answer to this may also come as a surprise. If I had to answer with simply a “yes” or “no,” I would answer “no.” Of course, this no would be very very nuanced and incomplete. It would also be an answer to the question as asked- do pastors need to go to seminary. C. H. Spurgeon, arguably one of the greatest preachers to have lived, did not go to seminary. I also personally know a lot of pastors who have not been professionally trained at a seminary who are also incredibly gifted, biblically faithful pastors. It is telling, however, that what these men have in common is that they spend large amounts of time in prayer- for their congregations and for their sermons. They also are incredibly well read, both in the Scriptures and in books by sound preachers and theologians. In other words, they are training for their calling, just not in a formally academic setting. It is also telling, I think, that one of the things Spurgeon set out to do, and did, was to build a school for the training of pastors- what we would today call a “seminary.”
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I spent a little time today visiting a forum where people posted images and pictures on things that gave them emotional responses. The images ranged between the absolute heart-wrenching to God-glorifying beauty. The contrast was astounding.

Of course, there were many things that exhibited the truthfulness of the fall. From families mourning the loss of loved ones from natural disasters and war to the effects of poverty on the image of God in people everywhere- whether the streets right here in Louisville to villages in third-world countries. The images are in-your-face digital realities of both sin and redemption. They cry out along with John, “Come, Lord Jesus!” They speak to us of our thirst for justice, and of our need of mercy. All the abstract talk on evil, sin, and salvation become frighteningly real.

So then, what are we Christians to do? Well, certainly, if someone brings up questions on God’s character and evil we should answer them, but there are a couple more points I want to bring out. These are in no particular order.
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Per Jeff’s request, I put the book of Revelation (ESV) through Wordle to generate a text cloud of the most used words. Here is the result:

Click for full-size

Special thanks to Andrew for the text. If any of the ESV crew wants me to take this down- please let me know!

After seeing the tag clouds created for the ESV using Wordle (a web application that creates a tag cloud for any user-supplied text), I decided to make one for my translation of Colossians thus far. Just click the thumbnail below to see the full-sized cloud (requires Java, soon I will make a picture of a screen-capture and host it here so everyone can see I made a screen-capture. Clicking on the image below will give you the full-sized image.).
At least so far, we can accurately say that Colossians is Christo-centric!

When I finish the book, I will do one on the complete text.

I just installed a plug-in that some of you may be interested in, called “Nofollow Free.” This plugin removes the “nofollow” tags that wordpress automatically adds to any links that are in your comments. The purpose of the nofollow tag is to discourage spam in comments- so why would we want to remove that tag? When people post comments with a link in them it boosts their pagerank in search engines such as google, which, in turn, boosts their visibility in searches. This encourages spammers to post comments with lots of links, so that each one of the spammer’s sites will get the boosts in pagerank. The nofollow tag disables the links from effecting this pagerank. The unfortunate side effect is that comments with legit urls (such as your blog’s url) are also punished. The Nofollow Free tag removes this tag from every url (including the one your name links to if you include your site’s url), allowing your post to positively benefit your pagerank, which gives you a better listing in search engines.

Wouldn’t that just encourage more spam? You won’t have to worry about that, because wordpress.org blogs already come with akismet (their spam blocker) installed. Just make sure you have that plug-in activated, and it won’t be an issue. With akismet running, and the Nofollow Free plug-in installed, we can help each other’s pagerank as we interact via comments on one another’s blogs!

I wanted to share another great quote from Wright’s “Surprised by Hope,” this time on the apparent differences between the Gospels. Do these differences show an inconsistency or do they actually point to the authenticity of the Gospels? Before I get to the quote, I want to remind everyone that N.T. Wright will be on The Colbert Report tonight. Should be interesting!

“… I conclude this first section of the chapter eith a proposal that it is far, far easier to eblieve that the [Gospel] stories are esentially very early, pre-Pauline, and have not been substantially altered except for light personal polishing, in subsequent transmission or editing. Yes, they show signs of the theological interests of the different evangelists: Matthew’s story of the resurrection emphasizes typically Matthean themes, and so on. But this is like what you get when different artists paint portraits of the same person. This painting is certainly a Rembrand; that is indubitably a Holbein. The touch of the individual artist is unmistakable. And yet the sitter is fully recognizedable. The artists have not changed the color of her hair, the shape of his nose, the particular half smile. And when we ask why such stories, so different in many ways and yet so interestingly consistent in these and other features, could have come into existence so early, all the early Christians give the obvious answer: something like this is what happened, even though it was hard to describe at the time and remains mind-boggling thereafter. The stories, though lightly edited and written down later, are basically very, very early. They are not, as has so often been suggested, legends written up much later to give a pseudohistorical basis for what essentially was a private, interior experience.” (pg. 57)