Reginald Finley is an internet sceptic. There are many such sceptics, who see themselves as part of a thriving community of thought, which in actuality amounts to a (virtual) crowd of usernames at internet forums who perceive themselves at the cutting edge of the genuinely critical approach to biblical studies. They are strident non-believers, they know that Jesus never existed, and they know – they are absolutely certain – that this is what the evidence shows. People who disagree are simply ignoring the evidence or are unwilling to challenge tradition.

Bart Ehrman is a New Testament critic. By that I mean that he’s a qualified, professional scholar who has expertise in textual criticism. In the past I’ve criticised Ehrman over what I take to be his rather sensationalist work, especially in the podcast episode Sexing Up Early Church History. I say that lest anyone think that I’m a fan of his. I’m not. As I explain in that episode, I think some of his theories about the way the church suppressed alternative books of the Bible are more at home in The Da Vinci code than in the classroom. Perhaps banking on the fact that a fellow non believer, and someone with a few degrees to boot, would come to the aid of the “Christ myth” theory, the fringe view that Jesus never existed, Finley broached the subject with Ehrman. You can tell from Finley’s reaction that he was unprepared for the reply.

Every now and then when I’m looking at a particular passage of Scripture I’ll come across a verse, scratch my head and think, “what were they thinking”? I don’t mean the author, I mean those responsible for the translation. Now I’m not the world’s greatest Hebrew or Greek scholar by any means, so I’m not talking about translations where the actual meaning is debatable, depending on subtleties that are frankly beyond my knowledge or abilities. I’m thinking of the kinds of translational… well, blunders (or so it seems to me) that are frankly surprising. So I thought – Why not start a blog series on verses like that, and ask for input from the readers?

That’s what I decided to do, and this is the first such blog. This time I have the NIV (among others) in my sights because of the way that they translated Romans 12:1. In Greek, the verse reads:

Parakalo oun hemas, adelphoi, dia ton oiktirmon tou theou parastesai ta somata humon thusian zosan hagian euareston to theo, ten logiken latreian humon.

I’ve highlighted the part that I want to draw your attention to. The verse is rather literally translated by the King James Version as follows: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.”

That phrase “reasonable service” could have been translated a number of ways. It’s translated from the Greek phrase logikon latreian. The term logikos basically means logical. Not necessarily in a strict mathematical sense, mind you, but of course it includes that. It means logical, rational, or perhaps reasonable. In context it indicates that giving ourselves wholly to God as living sacrifices is the sensible, reasonable or logical thing to do (Young’s literal translation says “your intelligent service”). In verse 3 the writer gives his reason for saying this, starting his sentence off with an exaplanatory conjunction “for…” (the greek word gar): “For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.” Given who God is, and given that we shouldn’t think more highly of ourselves than we really are, and given God’s mercy towards us, the only sensible thing we can do in response is to give ourselves completely to God.

In the year 1900 the American Standard Version of the New Testament was published (followed by the Old Testament in 1901). This new translation contained an idiosyncrasy that I cannot find any example of in the nineteenth century or earlier. It’s an idiosyncrasy that is no longer idiosyncratic, because from initially only one version, it has spread to quite a few translations. Here’s that post-1900 innovation, represented in various translations. You can see how over the years that innovation has itself sprouted others that were based on it:

1900, American Standard Version: “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service.”

1958, Amplified Bible: “I appeal to you therefore, brethren, {and} beg of you in view of [all] the mercies of God, to make a decisive dedication of your bodies [presenting all your members and faculties] as a living sacrifice, holy (devoted, consecrated) and well pleasing to God, which is your reasonable (rational, intelligent) service {and} spiritual worship.”

1973, New International Version: “Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.”

1989, New Revised Standard Version: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers and sisters, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

1991, New Century Version: “So brothers and sisters, since God has shown us great mercy, I beg you to offer your lives as a living sacrifice to him. Your offering must be only for God and pleasing to him, which is the spiritual way for you to worship.”

2001, English Standard Version, “?I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

How did “your reasonable service” evolve into “the spiritual way for you to worship”? Here’s my question: Why did people start, in the twentieth century, to translated logokos as “spiritual” here in Romans 12 – but for some reason, only in Romans 12?

What were they thinking when they did this? Are they all just parroting the American Standard Version? Can anyone versed in New Testament Greek offer a justification of this?

Although I’m familiar with the view that the Apostle Paul is relating an “out of body experience” at the outset of 2 Corinthians 12, I’m pretty sure that he is not. That’s partly because I’m a physicalist and I don’t think that such things are even possible, but it’s also because the evidence for this claim about the meaning of this passage is pretty weak. I’ll explain why I say this.
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Every Christian who decides on a stance to take on the mind-body issue is going to have to live with the fact that there will be certain “problem texts” in the Bible that appear to conflict with the position they take. As a physicalist, I think there is a very small number of such texts for my view, and I think there are plausible explanations for all of them (for example Jesus’ words to the criminal on the cross Luke 23:43, which I discussed recently). What one hopes to do is to settle on a view that has fewer problems than all others, problems that have an explanation in sight.

I think that traditional Cartesian/platonic dualism has a real problem, therefore, when it comes to 1 Corinthians 15, as I think it contains a problem for dualism – a problem with no real solution that I can see. The chapter is a decent size, so I won’t reproduce it here, but go ahead and read it first to make sure I’m representing what it says faithfully. The subject is the resurrection of the dead, and it arises because some of those in the church in Corinth had said that there will be no resurrection. The Apostle Paul makes a number of comments on this, one of which concerns my point here. In doing so he indicates that he cannot possibly have been a dualist.
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As I’ve indicated numerous times, I’m a physicalist. I don’t think that I’m an immortal ghost/soul living inside a body. I think that I’m a physical creature. Long before I encountered philosophy of mind or neuroscience, I became convinced that this is what the Bible teaches, making its teaching on human nature stand out like a sore thumb against the pagan Hellenistic theology of the first century.

I also become convinced that since I am not an immortal immortal ghost living inside a body, when my body dies I will not escape death and live on in heaven, or the underworld, or the astral plane or anything of that sort. I think the Bible teaches that death is very real and it puts an end to our life. There is no conscious state of any sort immediately following death. There is noting at all. Of course, I am a Christian and I do believe in the resurrection of the dead, but that obviously doesn’t happen when a person dies, or I think somebody would have noticed by now. The view I hold has sometimes been called “soul sleep” because it views death as a state of “sleep” or unconsciousness. It’s not an ideal term because it can be taken to imply dualism and maybe “person sleep” would be a better alternative, but it’s too late for that. The term has been coined.

Holding and expressing these views rubs some of my fellow conservative evangelicals the wrong way, but for the most part there’s really no disputing that the Bible presents human nature and death this way literally dozens of times in fairly clear language. Affirming dualism and the view that we live on as immaterial spirits after death and go somewhere is a point of view held in the teeth of the biblical evidence. This fact too, I suspect, rubs some of my fellow conservative evangelicals the wrong way.

In spite of the fairly clear overall teaching of the Bible, there is a very small handful of biblical passages (no more than four, in my view) that might be used (and have been used) to suggest that actually the general impression given by most of what the Bible teaches is false, and that really we do survive our bodily deaths and travel to heaven, or hell, or some other place and live consciously there. This should not be surprising. Whether you’re doing surveying, earth science or biblical interpretation, when formulating a theory you’re always going to be confronted with recalcitrant evidence, that is, evidence that at first glance seems to go against the flow of the well-established facts and is in need of an explanation. The existence of such evidence in science or in Scripture does not falsify a theory.

One of those texts is Luke 23:43.
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Recently I blogged briefly on what the Apostle Paul had to say about the baptism in the Holy Spirit, where he taught that it is something that all members of the church (metaphorically called the ‘body of Christ”) take part in, just by virtue of the fact that they are spiritually counted as members of the church.

My friend Geoff made a comment on that blog that prodded my memory. He said, “I’ve always wondered if what’s in view here is the difference between the old covenant (the temple, and therefore John’s baptism), and the new covenant, which means closer more personal relationship with God through Christ, and therefore the Spirit.” Geoff’s reference to the temple reminded me of another important New Testament passage that talks about the relationship between the Holy Spirit and believers.
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The so-called pericope adulterae of John 7:53-8:11 has frequently been used to suggest that Jesus did not approve either of the application of the Mosaic Law or of the death penalty (or both). Christopher Marshall for example claims that “there is only one passage in the New Testament that refers directly to the legitimacy of the death penalty (John 7:53-8:11).”¹ Marshall concludes that what we have in this crucial passage is an example of “restorative justice overthrowing retributive justice in the Christian age.”² Thus, here Jesus overthrows the justice of the Old Testament in favour of a more gracious approach to social ethics. Arguing from a clearly different theological/ethical framework, Kaiser too appeals to this passage, viewing it as important evidence that “the morality of the law abides while the sanctions may change.”³
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Time to wax theological just a little. More or less all Christians in the Western world – and plenty of people who aren’t Christians as well, are familiar with Pentecostalism. It’s a brand of Christianity born at the beginning of the twentieth century with a strong emphasis on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and also the gifts of the Holy Spirit, with a special emphasis on what they refer to as the “gift of tongues.” I might say more about that another time, but for now I just want to comment briefly on the Pentecostal emphasis on the Baptism in the Holy Spirit and the way that it relates (or does not relate) to the New Testament.
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