November 11, 1999

CLEVELAND—"This is not a Bible," the Rev. Dr. David J. Lull said, holding a Bible in his hand. "It's a translation of the Bible."

The comment may seem startling, but to those attending a Wednesday morning forum, "The Living Word: Translating the Good Book at the NCC," Lull’s description made perfect sense.

Lull and the Rev. Dr. Bruce M. Metzger of Princeton Theological Seminary and chair of the NCC’s Standard Bible Translation Committee co-led a forum that explored the rich history of the NCC’s Bible translation work.

A new documentary, The Bible Under Fire, which examined that often-controversial history, served as catalyst for a lively discussion. The documentary charts the evolution of the NCC’s Bible translation through the years, including extreme charges by NCC critics in the 1950s that the translators of the original Revised Standard Version (RSV) were communist sympathizers.

Metzger and Lull said translators must, in effect, be "faithful traitors" to the text they are translating – they must be true to the original language and yet produce a readable work in a language and context far removed from the original. "I try to be as literal as possible and as free as necessary," said Metzger.

The Bible took center stage at two Tuesday forums, the second being "Reading the Good Book Today and in the New Millenium" by the Rev. Prof. Peter J. Gomes, author of "The Good Book," and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Pusey Minister in the Memorial Church of Harvard University.

Despite the title of the forum, Gomes said that "reading the Good Book is not a millennial short subject" but an enterprise that needs to be taken up with renewed vigor by members of the nation’s mainline Protestant denominations. "The fundamentalists didn’t steal the Bible," he said. Rather, those in the mainline denominations "gave it away" by de-emphasizing the kind of rigorous reading of the Bible that was once something of a cultural norm in the United States.

Gomes said he is trying to combine "the warmth" of his own Bible-soaked evangelical background with an academic vigor – affirming a tradition that a strong biblical faith need not be at odds with critical analysis and thinking. Gomes also noted the constant evolution and changes of reading biblical texts through the centuries. "We don’t read the texts in the same way," he said, "because we can’t read the texts in the same way."

He also affirmed a point made by Lull and Metzger—that the Bible itself was a construct of different communities and authors and the result of a long process of formation. The Bible is not, Gomes said, something that was "dropped from the sky."