Yeah, I guess two in one week is overkill. Me going after the NRSV is like teasing that old friend. It’s just that, when you look at the footnotes (the ones for the translation, not the Oxford annotations in my copy), it is quite clear how often, in the choice between two possible readings of the original, the translators always pick the most politically correct and palatable. Sometimes it seems like they go a little too far. Not to mention the fact that, throughout, “inclusive language” is used (instead of “brothers,” “brothers and sisters,” etc.), which I think it is fair to say often amounts to putting words in the mouth of the text.
Both of these essays on exegesis have been about the experience of perhaps wanting the Bible to say something different than it does. When that is the urge, the NRSV, in a way, makes it seem so easy. Now I realize that what they do must have behind it all the weight of the most august scholarship. But you can’t help feeling that something fishy is going on too.
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