ISSUE 3 – SUMMER 2019

Guardians
of the Word TH
How Mediaeval
scribes preserved
the Old Testament
ink
Research and resources from
Tyndale House, Cambridge

Dr Peter J Williams: Christopher Ash:

confronting scepticism Bible Masterclass

© Tyndale House 2019

S U P P O RT
TYNDALE
HOUSE
Tyndale House is funded almost
entirely by individuals like you,
who generously invest to secure
the future of Christian research

Please help us promote Bible understanding

in the Church and around the world

You can give to the work

of Tyndale House by
visiting us online at
tyndalehouse.com/support
Contents
visit tyndalehouse.com From the editor
4 H
ow much thought do you give to the
Scepticism under earliest physical copies of the Bible? For
scrutiny most of us what matters is the text, not
tangible objects. However these artifacts play
Dr Peter J Williams
a hugely important part in our understanding of
examines the work
what Scripture says.
of Prof Bart Ehrman How do we know that the Old Testament
and offers a response to we read is essentially the same Hebrew Bible
his sceptical scholarship that Jesus read? This question matters, and
it is answered with reference to ancient and

8 Bible Toolkit
In his new column,
Christopher Ash brings
sometimes beautiful manuscripts, created
by incredibly committed people, who lived
hundreds of years ago.
The cover of this issue shows an amazing
academic insights to bear “carpet page” from one such manuscript, the
on passages we Leningrad Codex. Its intricate design evidences
find difficult the care and creativity of these early scribes,
who dedicated their lives to the preservation

10
Leningrad
of Scripture. You can find out more about their
painstaking work and the tricks of their trade on
page 10.
In this issue we also introduce a new column
by teacher, preacher and writer Christopher
Codex Ash. His Bible Toolkit looks at how we can use
Explore the scholarship to better understand the parts of
ancient the Bible that we find puzzling — particularly
manuscript when the commentaries all seem to say
that lies different things. Find out more about the help
available on page 8.
behind our
Don’t forget, it’s free to subscribe to Ink
modern Bible
magazine by visiting tyndalehouse.com/
translations connect. If you would like multiple copies to
distribute to your church, contact us at ink@

14 A Bible for Romania

Dr Emanuel Contac explains
why he was so determined to
tyndalehouse.com and let us know.

Tyndale House is a dynamic academic hub that

specialises in the languages, history and culture
see a revised translation of of the Bible. Visit us at tyndalehouse.com
Scripture for his country

19 Q&A
Dr Brittany Melton
talks about parts of
Editor Kay Carter
Production Editor Bethany Sherwood
Art Director Ruth Guthrie
Cover: Photograph by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic
the Bible where God Research, in collaboration with the Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center.
seems distant Courtesy Russian National Library (Saltykov-Shchedrin).

Published by Tyndale House, 36 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, CB3 9BA n Company No 9437542 Reg Charity No 1161396
To cancel your subscription to ink at any time, contact us at ink@tyndalehouse.com, or at the above postal address
3
BIBLE HISTORY

How
Prof Bart D Ehrman has sold
millions of books questioning the
reliability of the Bible. Read beyond
the dramatic titles, though, and his
arguments are far from irrefutable,
says Dr Peter J Williams

B
art D Ehrman is arguably the world’s
most influential Bible sceptic. As the
James A Gray Distinguished Professor
of Religious Studies at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, he is a gifted
communicator widely sought as a speaker
and debater.
His Bible scepticism gains persuasiveness
through the story of his own deconversion from
Christianity, after studying at two well-known
American Evangelical institutions (Moody
Bible Institute and Wheaton College) before
going on to Princeton. He developed a highly
credible publishing profile by beginning with
obscure technical work before proceeding to
college textbooks and then six New York Times
bestsellers, the first of which, Misquoting Jesus,
came out when Ehrman was 50.
Thus unlike many popular sceptics who take
swipes at the Bible, Ehrman has a weight of
scholarship behind him when he speaks. He
gains further weight through avoiding many of
the most extreme sceptical positions — he even
wrote a book against those sceptics who argue
that Jesus didn’t exist — and through the fact
that so much of what he says is supported by a
host of other scholars who are equally sceptical
of the Bible, though less vocal.
No wonder some of his 30 or so books
have been translated into nearly as many
languages and his books have sold more than
two million copies. All this might make Ehrman’s
arguments sound unassailable, but they’re not.
They’re simply a well presented case for Bible

4 visit tyndalehouse.com

scepticism
became a bestseller
scepticism. I want here just to point out two
notable characteristics of his writings.
Sensationalist titles
Ehrman is master of the sceptical (sub)
title. Often his titles stress that he’s revealing
information which has been kept from us (note
the word “we” in all three titles):
Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and
the Faiths We Never Knew (2003)
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing
the Hidden Contradictions in the
Bible (And Why We Don’t Know
About Them) (2009)
Forged: Writing in the Name of God
— Why the Bible’s Authors Are Not
Who We Think They Are (2011)
Though titles need to aim to grab
attention, we still have to ask
whether the impression given
in the title is true. Consider
Ehrman’s first bestseller:
US title: Misquoting Jesus: The
Story Behind Who Changed
the Bible and Why
UK title: Whose Word Is It? The
Story Behind Who Changed the
New Testament and Why
In marketing terms, the US title is
certainly snappier, but we can see
from the UK title that it’s knowingly
visit tyndalehouse.com
BIBLE HISTORY
inaccurate. The book is purely about the New
Testament, but the US title gives the impression
that the whole Bible has been substantially
changed.
When we open up the book we find that by
far the biggest “changes” Ehrman writes about
are the end of Mark (Mark 16:9–20) and the
passage about the woman caught in adultery
(John 7:53–8:11), which are of course points
of manuscript variation noted in most modern
Bible translations (and probably circulated
in hundreds of millions of copies). Based on
the content provided in the book Ehrman
could equally well have entitled it “The Story
Behind Who Changed Small Parts of the New
Testament and Why”, though I guess that might
not sell so well.
The ideas of change, deceit and cover-up
in earliest Christianity are regular themes as we
see from other titles by Ehrman:
Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into
the New Testament (2003)
Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary
Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (2012)
How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a
Jewish Preacher from Galilee (2014)
Jesus Before the Gospels: How the Earliest
Christians Remembered, Changed, and
Invented Their Stories of the Savior (2016)
There’s often a major disconnect between the
dramatic title and the contents of the book.
After all, in an appendix to an early edition of
the US paperback of Misquoting Jesus Ehrman ›
5
BIBLE HISTORY
admits that if he and his teacher, Professor
Bruce Metzger, one of the main editors of the
popular Greek New Testament published by
the German Bible Society, were editing the
Greek New Testament together “there would be
very few points of disagreement — maybe one
or two dozen places out of many thousands.”
In other words, what Ehrman would produce
would differ little from what stands behind
modern English Bible translations.
But how many readers of the subtitle The
Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and
Why would conclude that Ehrman might only
be talking of a small number of changes to
wording across the entire New Testament?
Distance creators
A recurring theme in Ehrman’s work is that
of distance. Whether it’s the distance in time
between the New Testament manuscripts and
the original authors, or the distance between
6 visit tyndalehouse.com
the original authors and Jesus, Ehrman has a
whole array of ways of creating the impression
of a huge gap between the New Testament
and us.
Ehrman’s story runs like this. Yes, there was
a Jesus, who was a preacher who expected
the end of the world within a generation, but
who didn’t think of himself as the Son of God.
He came from the rural “hamlet” of Nazareth,
taught in Aramaic and his words were heard
by Aramaic-speaking illiterate peasants.
Any stories and teachings from Jesus which
arrived at the highly literate and educated
gospel writers had been through many stages
of transmission within an oral culture (and
we know oral cultures aren’t even aware how
much their traditions change). The gospels
were written in the late first century and are
probably not by the people whose names
they bear. They lived well away from Roman
Judaea and wrote 40-65 years after the events.
The best analogy for the way the message
was corrupted is what in the US is called the
Telephone Game (or, as it rather insensitively
used to be known in the UK, Chinese
Whispers), the party game in which a message
is whispered round a circle of people and the
message is easily corrupted as it passes from
one person to another.
All this corruption could occur because
there weren’t that many people passing on the
message. By the year AD 100 there were only
about 7,000 to 10,000 Christians in the entire
world. The likelihood that an individual in the
Roman empire would actually know a Christian
personally was relatively slim.
But with more consistency with the evidence
one could tell a completely different story. Jesus
has as many biographies of him as the most
 BIBLE HISTORY

famous person alive at the time, the emperor The stress on the large numbers of
Tiberius. In these sources he repeatedly Christians is something which similarly
indicates that he is uniquely God’s Son. comes through the reports of Tacitus and
He came from Nazareth, which overlooked Pliny. The book of Acts would have looked
the international trade route through the completely implausible if, as in Ehrman’s
Jezreel Valley. Nazareth was four miles from model, it were claiming the Roman Empire
Sepphoris, which was the capital of Galilee were being overrun by a group hardly anyone
for much of Jesus’s childhood and had a had ever encountered. There were many
Greek theatre. Jesus knew exactly what actors people who had seen and heard Jesus. In
were, which is why he used the word “actor” the four gospels we have two accounts by
(Greek hypocrites) to describe Pharisees. In eyewitnesses (Matthew and John), and two by
adulthood Jesus moved to Capernaum, and non-eyewitnesses, but based on eyewitness
travelled within a testimony (Mark
rather multilingual using Peter, and
context. He came When we open up the book we Luke interviewing
to be called a find that by far the biggest ‘changes’ many).
rabbi and gathered Ehrman’s work
Ehrman writes about are Mark 16:9-20
disciples whose is significant
main job it was to and John 7:53-8:11, which are because he is so
learn his teachings. points of manuscript variation already widely read and
The names of his because he also
noted in most modern Bible translations
disciples reflect the has developed a
trilingual context: comprehensive
Greek (Andrew, secular
Philip); Aramaic (Bartholomew, Thomas); and explanation for early Christianity. His position
Hebrew (John, Matthew) — so that whatever results from an accumulation of choices of
language Jesus taught in there’s no reason more sceptical interpretations of the evidence,
to think his teaching could not be correctly but many of these choices are wide open to
handed down in Greek. After the first Easter, challenge and indeed are actively challenged
Christianity spread like wildfire as reflected in by other scholars. TH
the numbers given in the Acts of the Apostles:
3,000 came to believe (2:41), then 5,000 men Dr Peter J Williams is
(4:4), then more and more (6:7; 11:21; 16:5); Principal of Tyndale House
people claimed that Christians had turned
the Roman world upside down (17:6) and were Dr Peter J Williams is debating Prof Bart
wrecking the Ephesian silversmiths’ Ehrman later this year as part of Premier
trade (19:24-27); the numbers of Judaean Christian Radio’s The Big Conversation,
believers alone numbered in their tens of www.thebigconversation.show
thousands (21:20).

visit tyndalehouse.com 7
MASTERCLASS
Bible toolkit
In his new column, Christopher Ash shows how scholarship
can help us better understand passages we struggle with
Keep the faith
How can Bible languages and scholarship help
us understand Bible passages better? Wheth-
er we are preaching, teaching children or a
small group, or reading by ourselves, we all hit
puzzles, incongruities or questions we can’t
answer. At Tyndale House our aim is to serve
the Church through Bible scholarship, and help
Christians deal with situations just like this. My
position here is a little unusual because I’m not
a professional Bible scholar. I am a pastor — a
preacher, with some appreciation of the value
of good scholarship and, inevitably, a sense
of the pointlessness or even poison of
bad scholarship.
Perhaps you’re writing a talk
for a youth group. You diligently
print out the passage, highlight
the tricky parts, and reach for
a commentary. An hour,
and four commentaries
later, you find you’ve tied
yourself up in knots. All the
commentaries seem to say
different things, and you’ve
barely scratched the
surface of some of the
trickier issues. So how do we use scholarship
well? How can we let it shape how we read the
Bible, without getting overwhelmed?
Here is one example of how scholarship
has given me a helping hand when preparing
to preach or teach. In coming issues of ink I
will be looking at more.
8 visit tyndalehouse.com
“...if we are faithless, he remains faithful — for
he cannot deny himself” (2 Timothy 2:13)
2 Timothy 1:1-2:13, the first main section of
the letter from the apostle Paul to the pastor
Timothy, is a sustained and personal appeal to
be faithful and suffer for the apostolic gospel.
Paul concludes each section with one of the
“trustworthy sayings” that appear from time to
time in the pastoral letters. This “trustworthy
saying” has four parts. The first three are
relatively straightforward:
“If we have died with [Christ], we will also
live with him”. This is clearly positive, both in its
condition (if we died with Christ, a good thing to
do) and in its outcome (we will live with him).
“...if we endure, we will also reign with him”.
This also is positive. We endure (a good and
necessary thing) and as a result we reign with
Christ.
“...if we deny him, he also will deny us”. This
is negative, both in its condition (we deny him, a
bad thing) and in its outcome (he will deny us).
But what of the final part?
“...if we are faithless, he remains faithful”. The
condition is negative: we are faithless, clearly a
bad thing. But what about “he remains faithful”?
Is this a positive thing for us or a negative thing?
Commentators disagree. When I taught a
Bible training course, I used to set our students
a little exercise. I gave them (anonymously)
three commentary extracts, in which reliable
commentators read this final part in three
different ways. I wanted them to learn to

ask advice from friends and well-chosen
commentators, but then to think carefully for
themselves.
Some good commentators believe the
pattern indicates that this final part is entirely
negative. Paul has given two positives (both
in condition and in outcome), then a negative,
which suggests the fourth is also negative
(both in condition and outcome). On this
reading, the final section means: “If we are
faithless to Christ, then Christ will remain
faithful to his warnings, for he cannot deny
himself by contradicting the warning he
has given.”
As I considered this, one observation and
one question sprang to mind. The observation
is that this final section is phrased unusually,
with the extra words “for he cannot deny
himself”. This might indicate a breaking of the
pattern (we don’t know for sure). The question
is this: can we learn anything from the way
Paul uses the word “faithful” when speaking
about God or Christ elsewhere? Does he use
it positively (of God’s faithfulness in rescue) or
negatively (of God’s faithfulness in judgment)
or both?
I ran a search with some Bible software
(any digital version of the Bible with
Greek and English translations — such as
STEPBible.org — can do this) and found that
Paul uses the word pistos (faithful) six times
about God or Christ. The other five are all
positive; they all speak of God’s or Christ’s
faithfulness in rescuing his people.
Illustrations by
Jason Ramasami
visit tyndalehouse.com
MASTERCLASS
• “God is faithful, by whom you were called
into the fellowship of his Son…” (1 Cor 1:9)
• “God is faithful, and he will not let you be
tempted beyond your ability, but with the
temptation he will also provide the way of
escape…” (1 Cor 10:13)
• “As surely as God is faithful, our word to you
has not been Yes and No. For the Son
of God…was not Yes and No, but
in him it is always Yes… And it
is God who establishes us with
you in Christ…” (2 Cor 1:18-22)
• “He who calls you is faithful; he
will surely do it” (1 Thess 5:24)
• “But the Lord is faithful. He
will establish you and guard
you against the evil one.”
(2 Thess 3:3)
This does not prove that Paul
uses the word positively in 2 Timothy
2:13, but it suggests this. Breaking the positive-
positive-negative-negative pattern, Paul ends
on a note of surprising grace. There is perhaps
a difference between the final denial of Jesus
(verse 12b), following what Judas Iscariot did,
and the temporary faithlessness (verse 13), in
the sad but not finally catastrophic tradition of
Simon Peter. Timothy may have, or may in the
future, fail to be faithful; but Jesus will keep him
to the end.
When reading challenging verses, it is good
to have people we can turn to for assistance.
Bible scholars can help us get a better grip on
the debates surrounding a passage, they write
software that enables us to take a step back
from the detail and see the bigger picture, and
they can help us get a closer look at the raw
materials the commentary writers are working
with. We’re unlikely to find easy solutions
where generations before us have failed, but
scholarship can provide tools to enable us to
understand passages better. It’s surprisingly
satisfying to wrestle with a challenging
passage, and even more satisfying to do it in
the company of friends. TH
Christopher Ash is writer-in-residence at
Tyndale House. All verses from the ESV
9
BIBLE TRANSMISSION

Learn the secrets of

the Leningrad Codex

I
magine a man, his name is Samuel. He
is a scribe. The year is AD 1008 and
he sits, day after day, in Fustat, now
part of modern-day Cairo, painstakingly
copying text onto pages of parchment. The
manuscript he is creating must be of the
highest possible quality — it is the Hebrew
Bible, and his community is entrusted with
the sacred responsibility of reproducing it
as faithfully as possible. Little does Samuel
know that in a thousand years, the document
he is poring over will become the oldest
known complete manuscript of the Hebrew
Bible in the world.
Far from being a fictional character,
Samuel son of Jacob was a real person
who, in the year 1008 –1009, completed the
manuscript now known as the Leningrad
Codex or, more simply, “L”. And we know
the work is his because of various ›

10 visit tyndalehouse.com
Photographs by Bruce and Kenneth Zuckerman, West Semitic Research, in collaboration with the
Ancient Biblical Manuscript Center. Courtesy Russian National Library (Saltykov-Shchedrin).
Mediaeval scholars were able to reproduce the text of the Bible
with astonishing accuracy. Dr Kim Phillips explains how they did it
notes at the beginning and end about who wrote it,
when, where, and for whom.
While we have hundreds of Hebrew Bible
manuscripts from antiquity and the mediaeval era
that are earlier than the Leningrad Codex — some
containing large portions of the biblical text, others
just a few letters — L is the earliest complete
manuscript. It contains all 24 books of the Hebrew
Bible (Jewish tradition counts the books differently
from the way they appear in most English Bibles,
although the text is the same) and lies directly behind
translations such as the NIV and ESV.
L is also significant as one of the best examples
of the so-called Masoretic Text — the particular
form of the Hebrew Old Testament as preserved
and transmitted by Jewish scholars known as the
Masoretes (“traditionalists”), who were active from
about the 7th century AD onwards. To glimpse the
Leningrad Codex is to enter a mediaeval world where
passionate devotion to the text meets patient and
painstakingly fastidious attention to every detail. A
kind of mediaeval Tyndale House. Let’s take a closer
look at a typical page.
The Biblical Text
The Biblical text in the Leningrad Codex is divided
into at least three separate strands, including
consonants, vowels and accents. Originally, each
strand was transmitted separately and only the
consonants of each word were actually written on
the parchment.
From the evidence of the available documents,
we know that the Jewish community preserved that
consonants-only text virtually flawlessly for more
than a thousand years. However, reading a text
consisting of only consonants is harder than it might
sound. Consider the Hebrew word shalom (peace,
wholeness) which is represented by the three letters
sh-l-m (the Hebrew alphabet has a single letter in
visit tyndalehouse.com
BIBLE TRANSMISSION
place of our “sh” sound). These letters, without the
help of vowels and other distinguishing marks, could
be read as shalom (peace), or shalem (complete), or
shillem (he recompensed), or shullam (it was repaid).
In practice, the context in which a word appears
is usually sufficient to determine how the word ought
to be read. Nonetheless, there are frequently places
where the context leaves the consonantal text open
for interpretation. Here is where the oral element
of transmission comes in. We know that in the
centuries before Jesus, a set way of reading aloud
this consonantal text was developed and passed on
orally. In this way the words themselves, not just the
consonants, were preserved. The role of this ancient
oral tradition was to pass on the correct interpretation
of how to pronounce the consonants.
This reading tradition, astonishingly, continued
to be transmitted orally for many centuries until the
Masoretes developed their graphic systems of vowel
and accent signs. Using those signs, they were able
to record, with minute precision, the oral reading
tradition they had received.
This raises the question of how on earth the Jewish
community managed such a gargantuan feat of
textual conservation. The answer, in short, is that they
counted. An example will help to explain.
On the very first column of the very first page of L
we see the following:
The biblical text reads “And God said” (Genesis
1:3). Next to this, in the right hand margin, a short
Masoretic note reads “29”. What does this mean? The
note is referring to the fact that in the entire Hebrew
Old Testament there are 29 places where this
particular form of the verb “to say” is followed by ›
11
BIBLE TRANSMISSION
Anatomy of a Masoretic Bible manuscript
The vowels: most of the smaller
lines and dots surrounding the
consonants represent the vowels.
This graphic vowel notation system
was designed by the Masoretes
in their efforts to preserve the
carefully transmitted reading
tradition they had received
from antiquity.
12
The consonants: before the
Mediaeval era, Hebrew (like
many Semitic languages) was
a consonants-only language in
its written form. Subsequently the
vowels and accents were woven
around this consonantal base text.
The Masoretic Notes
(Masora)
Surrounding the biblical
text, in the margins
between the columns
and at the top and
bottom of the page,
are the Masoretic
notes. These are an
intricate matrix of many
thousands of individual
notes all designed to
preserve and safeguard
the minute details of the
biblical text. The long
notes written above
and below the biblical
text are called Masora
Magna; the shorter notes
between the columns,
written in abbreviations
of often only a single
letter, are known as
Masora Parva.
The accents: roughly speaking,
each word of the manuscript is
given an accent. The system of
Masoretic accents helps the reader
pronounce each word correctly,
and also determines the way the
text should be divided up into
sentences, clauses and phrases,
and how the text should be chanted.
visit tyndalehouse.com

some form of the Hebrew noun ‫( אלהים‬God). Think of
the labour involved in arriving at this number (which is
absolutely correct), when all you have is the text, plus
parchment and ink on which to make notes.
But how does all this counting help anyone? A
moment’s reflection on the biblical text reveals that
the phrase “and God said” is actually rather rare. By
far the more common is the phrase “And the LORD
said” (‫)ויאמר יהוה‬. A quick check confirms that, in
fact, the phrase “and the LORD said” occurs more
than 200 times in the biblical text. If one then
includes phrases such as “thus says the LORD” and
such like, this takes the total to more than 600.
The scribes who transmitted the Hebrew Old
Testament, who knew the Hebrew text inside out,
realised there was a great danger that in some of
the places where the text should read “and God
said”, a careless scribe may inadvertently write the
far more common “and the LORD said”. To guard
against such an error creeping into the text, they
produced a list of all the places where the text
should read “and God said”. This list appears in
the bottom margin of the page, below the relevant
biblical text itself. These longer notes are the Masora
Magna and their function is to expand and give
further detail to the information found in the short
notes between the columns (the Masora Parva).
Here is what is left of the list of places containing the
phrase “and God said”:
These lists were compiled long before the
introduction of chapter and verse numbers into the
text. So, the only way to cite a given verse was to
give a little quotation from the verse itself. The user
of the Masora was expected to remember the
relevant verse on the basis of the little snippet. For
visit tyndalehouse.com
BIBLE TRANSMISSION
example, the last citation visible in the list above is
the short phrase: ‫( ההיטב‬approximately: “do you do
well to…?”) So, the user of this Masoretic list is
looking for a verse containing the phrases “and God
said…” and the phrase “do you do well to…”. The
answer can only be Jonah 4:9: “And God said to
Jonah: ‘Do you do well to be angry for the plant?’ ”
Thus, the Masora Parva and Masora Magna serve
as different aspects of one vast, integrated textual-
preservation system. The Masora Parva attaches
itself to every part of the biblical text particularly
liable to be corrupted. Sometimes the Masora Parva
itself gives instructions as to how that part of the
text should be written. Additionally, the Masora
Parva often points the reader to the Masora Magna,
which gives instructions for the correct writing of that
portion of text, as well as “links” to every other part
of the biblical text where that same element occurs.
These links enable rapid cross-referencing, so
that in one sitting it is possible to check that every
occurrence of one particular textual detail has been
correctly reproduced.
The Leningrad Codex contains no fewer than
60,000 Masoretic notes, all serving as a protective
hedge around the text of the Scriptures. This vast
expenditure of labour and toil was driven by a
passionate commitment to the biblical text as the
very words of God. If he has spoken, then every
jot and tittle is precious; even the smallest detail
serves as a receptacle for something of God’s
communication and communion with his people,
and with humankind. TH
Dr Kim Phillips is a research
associate at Tyndale House
13
INTERVIEW
A Romanian Bible
for the 21st century
For a hundred years,
Romanians have been
reading a Bible with
dated vocabulary and
second-hand translation.
Kay Carter speaks to
Dr Emanuel Contac about
seeing his vision for a new
version become reality
14
‘I
didn’t have an ounce
of faith that a revision
to the Romanian Bible
was possible,” says
Emanuel Contac, grinning. He is
recalling his first visit to Tyndale
House, in 2012, to write a history
of the Romanian Cornilescu Bible.
Used by half a million people in
Romania, as well as a Romanian
diaspora numbering in the tens
of thousands, the Cornilescu is
the favourite Bible version among
Romanian Evangelicals and
Protestants, and is much loved.
But it is also almost 100 years old,
and the language has never been
revised. Not only is the vocabulary
dated, but it isn’t even all
translated from the original Greek
and Hebrew — significant portions
are second-hand translations from
a French edition.
In the conclusion to his book
on the history of the Cornilescu,
Contac mused that, perhaps in 10
years, a new revised edition could
be published drawing on the
familiar phrasing but fully faithful
to the earliest Bible sources. Sadly
although such a project had been
envisioned in the 1930s, with the
rise of Communism in Romania at
the end of the Second World War
it had to be abandoned. Reading
the current version, Contac says,
“is like a British person reading
the King James Bible. Our own
visit tyndalehouse.com

‘translation
Reading the current Romanian
is like a British person
reading the King James version
version is not as old as the King
James, but in some cases the
words used are so dated that
they have changed their meaning.
There are passages that are very
hard to understand because
we are struggling with archaic
language.
“I once saw a film about
Jesus’s death and resurrection,
and I was intrigued because
the film showed Jesus being
whipped before his crucifixion.
In the Romanian version of the
Bible we read not that Jesus was
flogged with a whip, but that he
was beaten with rods. The word
used comes from a French word
(verge) which means a flexible
cane, but in the Greek we see that
he was whipped with a Roman
whip. It doesn’t have particular
theological importance, but you
can see the difficulties.”
Unbeknown to Contac, the
British and Foreign Bible Society
(BFBS), which has printed the
Cornilescu since 1924, had taken
his words to heart. In 2015, on
behalf of BFBS, the Romanian
Bible Society approached him
and asked him to assemble a
panel of scholars to review the
text for a new edition.
During his PhD research at the
University of Bucharest, Contac
had spent time looking at how key
words were translated across 30
Bible versions, and had written
a brief history of Romanian Bible
translations. He also teaches New
Testament Greek at Bible school,
visit tyndalehouse.com
INTERVIEW
’
making him the natural person to Cornilescu couldn’t make
lead the revision project. use of computers to help him
The BFBS wanted a group with consistency because he
that was representative of the produced his version on a
major denominations then using typewriter, and even wrote some
the Cornilescu translation. By of it by hand. At that time the
April of 2015, Contac had firm Romanian people were desperate
commitments from nine scholars for a Bible in their own language,
from across the denominational so he set himself the task of
spectrum. “We’ve never had a completing his work in four years.
panel like this since the Romanian
Bible began being translated.
We never had a committee of
various scholars from different
backgrounds working together.
We also created a pastoral
committee, which was there to
make the connection between the
scholarly world and the world of
the Church. They would read the
text from the perspective of the
person in the pew, as people who
don’t know Greek and Hebrew.”
The aim of the BFBS was
to update the vocabulary but
without losing the essence of a
text which Romanian Christians
are enormously familiar with.
“Romanian has changed
considerably so we wanted to
renew the language but not to the
point where it’s a new translation.
We wanted to keep the style and
fluency. We wanted people to be
drawn to it, to have a beautiful text
that is read in the Church, but at To finish in such a short space The second
the same time avoiding some of of time he relied on foreign printing of
the older words. translations, and even followed the new
“Our job was so much easier the word order of a French version, hot
than Cornilescu’s because version, meaning the Romanian off the press
we have so many more tools version loses something in the
and commentaries available. translation. We wanted to look ›
15
INTERVIEW
again at some of these issues.
In English prose syntax isn’t
very flexible, but in Romanian
we can keep some of the word
plays from the Greek, as well
as matching the vocabulary as
closely as possible to the original
languages.
“For example, the Greek
term dikaiosunē is translated in
English as ‘righteousness’. In
the Romanian Bible version it’s
translated as ‘unblemished’, so
it defines this characteristic in
the negative, by what it’s not. But
righteousness is a positive term
and ‘unblemished’ doesn’t do it
justice, so we decided to go back
and translate it with a positive
Romanian term (dreptate).”
In 2015, Contac headed back to
Tyndale House to work on the new
text. “In Romania we don’t have
all the exegetical commentaries
that are necessary, so first and
foremost I wanted access to the
excellent scholarly collection.
You also meet people who are
specialists and who deal in detail
with the issues you are looking at.
At one point I was discussing a
particular passage in 2 Corinthians
2 with Prof George Guthrie, from
Union University in Tennessee,
who was doing research at
Tyndale House. He said, ‘I’ve
written an article on that subject,’
and went back to his desk and
sent me the PDF. Tyndale House
provides that possibility of having
deep and detailed discussions
with scholars who come from
various backgrounds and who
have all sorts of skills.”
It took four years, but in April
2019 the New Testament was
ready to print. “We published
1,500 copies, which were
distributed in less than a week.
16
We had first-year Bible college
students who wanted to buy it for
their churches and friends. They
distributed with such enthusiasm
that by the time we’d supplied
all the people who contacted us
for copies we couldn’t put any on
public sale because there were
none left. Our next print run was
for 1,400 copies and they are
now available for the public to
buy, and a third
print run of 2,000
copies — with a
larger font and in
hard cover — is
planned for later in
the year. The text
is also online and
people are using it
through apps.”
Daniel Suciu,
a Romanian
pastor whose
congregation uses
the Cornilescu
version, sums
up the response
to the revised
New Testament. “I
really appreciate that
the text follows closely the text
in the original Greek. It not only
corrects the old version but adds
new nuances. For example, in 2
Corinthians 5:17, ‘For we do not
corrupt the Word of God’ has
become ‘For we do not peddle
the Word of God’. In 1 Corinthians
13:5, we read that love ‘does not
keep a record of evils’ instead of
‘does not think evil’.
“But I like that the revisers have
preserved the style of the old
version, by avoiding words with an
exaggerated contemporary flavour.
When you read, there is an added
sense of precision, but you get the
same flavour of the old version.”
Now that the New Testaments
are rolling off the presses, the
revision team has turned its
attention to the Old Testament.
“The whole Old Testament has
now been revised at least once
by the first reviser and more than
70% has been revised by the
second reviser,” says Contac.
“Next the literary reviser will
read the text, and I will work on
The first readers of the new
edition receive their copies
Isaiah, and proof-read the New
Testament again in preparation for
the new edition.”
Contac will again be coming
to Tyndale House to work on this
next phase of the project. “Being
the supervisor of the team, I’m
required to make sure I have read
every single verse,” he says. It is
detailed and painstaking work,
but now he has the air of a man
who has more than just an ounce
of faith. TH
Dr Emanuel Contac teaches
Greek and Hermeneutics at
the Pentecostal Theological
Institute of Bucharest
visit tyndalehouse.com
Your invitation
to study in
Cambridge
Tyndale House offers affordable
accommodation and private desks
for those working in biblical
scholarship or related disciplines at
a postgraduate or higher level

◗ World-leading library for biblical

scholarship
◗ Library open early until late,
Monday to Saturday
◗ The opportunity to research
alongside leading Christian
thinkers from across the world
◗ Newly renovated family flats and
single ensuite rooms

Tyndale House, 36 Selwyn Gardens, Cambridge, CB3 9BA

+44 (0)1223 566 601 ■ enquiries@tyndalehouse.com ■ www.tyndalehouse.com

Company No 9437542 Reg Charity No 1161396

Accuracy. Excellence. Depth. Beauty.
The English Standard Version® (ESV®) Bible is an essentially literal translation
of the Bible in contemporary English. Created by a team of more than 100
leading evangelical scholars and pastors, the ESV Bible emphasizes word-for-
word accuracy, literary excellence, and depth of meaning. Since its publication
in 2001, the ESV has gained wide acceptance and is used by churches,
denominations, organizations, and millions of individuals around the globe,
making it one of the leading Bible translations in the world today.

ESV.ORG
Q&A RESEARCH PEOPLE

n You and your family have recently moved to Florida —

so what brings you back to Tyndale House?
I’m here all week for the Tyndale Fellowship Conference,
an opportunity for Christian Bible scholars from around the
world to share papers and get to know each other.
I’m currently serving as secretary of the Old Testament
study group.
n You recently published your first book — tell me
more.
I’ve been researching books of the Bible where God either
isn’t mentioned at all or doesn’t explicitly speak or act — Song
of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes and Esther (or
the Megilloth as they’re collectively known). In particular I’ve
been looking at how influential the idea of the “absence of
God” has been in the way we read them. That really started
as a result of the so-called Death of God movement, which
began after the Second
World War, when people
were questioning how a
war like that could have
A conversation with ... to problems that we
never lament because
we don’t acknowledge
happened, and even if Dr Brittany Melton , Assistant Professor of they’re problems.
there is a God at all. But One of those sermons
the writers of the Old Biblical and Theological Studies at Palm Beach Atlantic examined how our idea
Testament weren’t asking University. Brittany spent six years at Tyndale House of race is formed, and
“Does God exist?”. So how that has impacted
when we approach the
from 2012, studying the presence and absence of God Native Americans and
Bible with this question, African Americans. The
we have to remember that we’re trying to fashion an answer preacher gave a call to lament what we are missing by not
to something the text isn’t addressing. We have freedom to appreciating diversity in the Church, and where we’ve gone
ask these sorts of modern questions, but it’s also good to wrong by not listening to those who are hurting.
consider questions that arise directly from the passages, n What’s the next project in the pipeline?
such as “Why does God at times seem distant?” At the moment I’m contributing to the revision of a series of
n What should the Church learn from the Megilloth? four books called Handbooks on the Old Testament (with
One feature, particularly found in Lamentations, is the Baker Academic). The senior editor is Dr David Firth, who
practice of lament, and the benefit we can derive from is chair of the Tyndale Fellowship Old Testament study
lament. We have a biblical precedent that indicates we group. Having thought recently about racial equity in the
should be lamenting, but we’re rarely doing that. Back in Church, we’ve committed in the suggested reading lists
the 1980s the theologian Walter Brueggemann wrote about to promote Majority World academics (for example those
this, but today I’m not sure many people even know how to from Asia, Africa or Latin America), and minority voices,
lament, and the Church is all the poorer for that. alongside classic works of Bible scholarship to which we’re
n What can we do practically to change that? all indebted. We realised this was important not just for
This is something I’ve been exploring with my husband, the sake of diversity but because this series is one of the
Drew, who is a minister and academic. We recently started most-used resources in the Majority World. There won’t be
a Bible study group called Pass the Pulpit, and every suggestions from every reader’s specific community, but
week we listen to a sermon by someone from a minority at least we can make sure we are advocating for a wider
group, or a preacher from a different denomination. range of voices. TH
Through this we listen to things we don’t often hear, and Interview by Kay Carter

visit tyndalehouse.com 21
 Don't miss out
Claim your free subscription
to make sure you receive
the next edition of ink

TH
ink

Visit our website to sign up: tyndalehouse.com/magazine

Or complete this form and return it via UK post to: "Freepost TYNDALE HOUSE"
(No stamp needed, please address exactly as shown. We are only able to post copies to UK addresses. If you live outside of the
UK, please visit tyndalehouse.com/magazine to be notified when an electronic edition goes live.)

Full name ____________________________________________________________________________________

Address ______________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Postcode Country UK
______________________________________________________________________________________________
Email address _________________________________________________________________________________
I would also like to receive Tyndale House's email newsletter
You can opt out of receiving the magazine or newsletter at any time, or update your contact preferences, by emailing ink@tyndalehouse.com. By giving
us this information you are agreeing to our privacy policy and giving consent for Tyndale House to contact you via post and/or email. To find out more
about how we use your data, read the Privacy Policy on our website: tyndalehouse.com/privacy-policy. Company No 9437542 Reg Charity No 1161396

And sign up for our newsletter at tyndalehouse.com/newsletter-signup