I've never embedded a video before, but I thought this one would give a fitting background for reading this post. It's a beautiful score that I actually paid money to buy, but I have to admit that it is perhaps the most vacuous text in the whole history of choral music. Just click play and read on.
My friend Rod Decker set off an unlikely firestorm a couple of days ago when he expressed approval of the decision by the NIV2011 translation committee to relegate the word Selah to a footnote (not to remove it, mind you, but to relegate it to a footnote). Rod rightly notes that English Bible translations offer little to the church when they insert untranslatable and non-propositional musical notations for which meaning been permanently and irreparably lost. Rod's argument makes good sense.
But the NIV-never crowd (hereafter NIVN) has chosen this issue as an unlikely hill on which to die. Jim Hamilton has sounded the clarion alarm that "NIV 2011 Removes Selah from the Biblical Text." Now Denny Burk has joined the alarm, arguing seriously that "even though no one is really sure what Selah means...it still figures in to the reader's interpretation of the text."
Really?
I'll admit that I've got mixed feelings about the NIV2011. I'm not a fan of the "singular they" and am a bit troubled that some of the material in the book of Proverbs that was intended for young men has been rendered more gender-inclusive than is wont. But I am very happy with a number of the improvements that have been made. It's an accurate translation constructed after painstaking exegesis by orthodox believers deeply committed to the inerrancy of Scripture. Not perfect by any means, but a solid contribution to the market.
This kind of sniping is frankly misplaced, and I have to believe that it will help the NIV rather than hurt it. The NIVN crowd is teetering perilously on the edge of irrelevancy.
EDIT: Rod Decker responds here.
7 comments:
http://youtu.be/wNGCe8y83C4
Touche. I've got some hesitation about the value of any song that just repeats a single word over and again, but some words are better than others. "Hallelujah" comes to mind as a more appropriate word, since it represents a whole sentence in one word.
I'm not sure, though, about "Selah." If it is, as most suspect, a musical marker, it's kind of like singing "Pianissimo," "Crescendo," or "Largo" over and over again.
Actually, I was just trying to "Amen" you post in a clever way...
FWIW, there is a dramatic selah right near the end of the Amen chorus that would lose its effect if they sang "selah" instead of pausing, that is if that's what "selah" means...
BTW, the Amen chorus is one of my favorite parts of the Messiah.
Well, Mark, would you say the "Selahs" are God-breathed or are they mere human notations? If they are God-breathed, wouldn't you say they should be retained in the text?
And yes, I do think they figure in interpreting the text. They offer a deliberate interjection into the text that forces the interpreter to consider why they are there and how the passages they mark off are distinguished from one another.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
I do believe the word Selah is inspired. So is the Hebrew word eth, a word used hundreds of times in the Hebrew OT. It is the sign of the direct object, and it has never been translated in the history of English translation.
So let me ask you the same question you asked me:
Well, Don, would you say the "eths" are God-breathed or are they mere human notations? If they are God-breathed, wouldn't you say they should be retained in the text?
MAS
Don, I've got to say something about your second paragraph, too. You say that Selah is a "deliberate interjection that forces the interpreter to consider why it is there." And yet, for centuries exegetes have been considering why it is there and nobody knows.
Which means that instead of discovering the reason for the word Selah, expositors have tended to invent reasons for its inclusion. Which is very unhelpful.
So one might conclude that the inclusion of the word Selah has historically proven more destructive than instructive to interpretation.
That is not to say it must be destructive. I'm not scandalized by translations that include Selah. But I'm not scandalized by those that exclude it, either.
Hi Mark,
Well... I accept that 'eth' is inspired, but the way it would be conveyed would be to translate the word it is connected to as a direct object. Would that be correct? (I am no expert on Hebrew, so just guessing here.) In other words, it doesn't seem to me that it must be transliterated, but that it's meaning must be (and is, I assume) translated correctly.
Selah, on the other hand is a stand-alone word. We can know some things about it. I do agree that there is widespread disagreement in the commentaries about its specific meaning. I often say to our people when such disagreement occurs that "nobody knows" what the passage is saying. At least not conclusively.
However, can we not make some assertions about some of these debatable passages (including Selah passages) without knowing fully what they mean? There are some hints in the context, albeit often obscure. With Selah, it seems to me that it often establishes a unit of thought in the particular Psalm it is found. I think its presence should be noted in some way, not just by a footnote.
As to your last comment, "I'm not scandalized by those that exclude it, either.", well, I guess I would have to agree. I just disagree with their choices on that point. I am scandalized by the NIV in all of its newer forms, and not real comfortable with its original form, but that is really not the issue of our discussion here.
Maranatha!
Don Johnson
Jer 33.3
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