Scripture is very important to me.  I graduated last year with my B.A. in Biblical theology, and plan to begin work on my MDiv soon.  I can barely read Hebrew beyond the common words, and I read Greek only stumblingly.  I plan to correct both these shortcomings as I pursue my Master’s.

I am also very supportive of studies in Messianic Judaism and the socio-cultural life of second-Temple Judaism.  I think Ken Bailey’s Jesus Through Middle-eastern Eyes is an indispensable work, as is N.T. Wright’s New Testament and the People of God, many of Joachim Jeremias’s works, Emil Brunner’s Jewish People at the Time of Jesus, and the apocrypha and other second-Temple era literature (Wisdom of Solomon, for instance) that Jesus would have been familiar with. 

All that said, I have some concerns with the Complete Jewish Bible. 

My main concern is that in its effort to “correct misinterpretations in the New Testament resulting from anti-Jewish theological bias,” it in fact alters the text itself.  Instead of translating a passage and then commenting on it, they paraphrase it into what they think it ought to mean.  For instance, in the passage we were discussing earlier, the Greek is very simple and easily translated: “To those under the law, I became as one under the law, though I myself am not under the law.”  The compiler of the CJB understands that to mean “With people in subjection to a legalistic perversion of the Torah, I put myself in the position of someone under such legalism, in order to win those under this legalism, even though I myself am not in subjection to a legalistic perversion of the Torah,” so they translated it that way. 

Whether or not that is what Paul had in mind is irrelevant to how the text should be translated.  The Greek has no implication of legalistic perversion, or any diminished or altered version of the law.  What Paul puts himself under is not anything of the law, which would be reflected in the Greek grammar, it is υπο νομον – under the law.  That is why I say, this is not a translation, or even a paraphrase, it is an interpretation.  Which is fine, we need commentaries and books that seek to interpret what the authors of scripture meant, but it is a serious problem to interpret scripture according to a comprehensive viewpoint, and then offer that interpretation as scripture in itself.

Just imagine if I published a Complete Pacifist Bible, where all the passages that seem to indicate that violence is justifiable were slightly changed to make them more clear.  For instance, I believe Luke 22:36, where Jesus said that it’s time for his followers to purchase swords, was a rhetoric device; he didn’t mean it literally.  So in my Complete Pacifist Bible I will translate it this way, “Jesus said to his disciples, as a figure of speech…”  Understandably, the Christian community would have a problem with that, even if they do agree with me that Christians shouldn’t be killing people. 

I think the most dangerous aspect of these types of projects is that they make it more difficult to communicate to others why we understand scripture the way we do.  Specifically, when I asked you earlier about Paul’s statement here, and another one, you responded with just that passage, with no attempt to explainwhy that’s a better interpretation than a straightforward reading of the Greek-to-English translation.  The more we use these kinds of projects, the less in touch we are with the common-ground of mere translation.  As it is, I can understand why not all Christians are pacifists, but if I have my Complete Pacifist Bible, which explains away all of the difficult passages, then I begin to suspect that Christians who see fit to enlist in the military are just stubborn, or sinful.  The same goes for Complete Calvinist Bibles, Complete Catholic Bibles, Complete Jewish Bibles.  We don’t want to cloister ourselves.