Ep 122: At-One-Ment

00:00- They're doing that with AI now.

00:03- I know.

00:04- They're using a lot of the Gen Z slang and everything,

00:07so I think it's so funny when they've got Moses.

00:10He's like, the C has been split and people are like,

00:13"Oh."

00:14And he's like, "I told y'all, trust the process."

00:17And I was like, "Oh my gosh."

00:20- Jesus has mad TikTok riz, y'all.

00:22- We are in the dumbest timeline.

00:26(upbeat music)

00:31- Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

00:33- And I'm Dan Beacher.

00:34- And you're listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast

00:38where we increase public access to the academic study

00:41of the Bible and religion,

00:42and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same.

00:46How are things today, Dan?

00:48- Rockin' and rollin', just out here

00:52making the world a groovy place.

00:56- And the construction going on next door to you

00:58has settled for the evening.

00:59- It's settled for the evening, yes.

01:01- They've been bedded down for the night.

01:03- You and I have been forced to push our recordings

01:07to evening even though you prefer afternoon

01:09because for the foreseeable future, there is building.

01:13- They're building a spaceship right next to you

01:15or something like that, yes.

01:17How high is it reaching?

01:19You've got the foundation has been poured already.

01:23- Yeah. - I see.

01:24- Okay.

01:25- Well, there is still an in process of pouring, so.

01:28- Oh, okay.

01:29- Yeah, it's a fascinating thing to watch.

01:33It's one of my favorite shows.

01:34I've been fascinated to see how the construction

01:38of a six or seven story apartment building starts,

01:43but it's also very loud and whatever.

01:51Anyway, hey, let's do a show.

01:54Today, one of the things that we're gonna talk about,

01:56first, we're gonna do a what's that.

01:59And this week's what's that is a bigon.

02:03It's the granddaddy of Christian theology.

02:07We're gonna talk about atonement.

02:09- At one meant for the initiated.

02:14- We'll get into that.

02:15We'll get into that because I had a whole thing.

02:18And then towards the end of the show,

02:22we're gonna talk about translation

02:25and we're gonna talk specifically about what it is.

02:29Like, what goes into it?

02:30Why is it, what's the process of translating a scripture?

02:35- Yeah.

02:37- 'Cause it's a.

02:38- Or many scriptures.

02:39- Or all the scriptures.

02:41- Sure, sure, yeah, absolutely.

02:44So we'll get to that in the latter half of the show.

02:47But first, what's that?

02:49Here's the thing, as you said.

02:54You said at one meant.

02:56Now I have looked at the word atonement

02:58and seen at one meant and thought that's a funny joke.

03:02At one meant, and then I've heard,

03:04I've also heard people say it means at one meant

03:09and I thought, okay, they're just dumb.

03:11And then I today, as I'm prepping for this show,

03:16I look it up and the etymology is that it's at one meant.

03:19Like that's the actual etymology of the word

03:21and now I'm furious.

03:24- Yeah, that one was a little on the nose,

03:26but yeah, the idea is the idea of reconciliation,

03:31satisfaction, reparation of a breach or an injury

03:37or something like that, reconciliation meaning

03:40to re-sit down with.

03:43So yeah, the idea of atonement is that bringing back together

03:48and repairing of that breach.

03:51So yeah, I always, we come from the same religious tradition,

03:56wherein that is a popular way to explain atonement.

04:01And I too, when I first started hearing that was like,

04:04"Yeah, that's not true."

04:05- That can't be right.

04:08I know a lot about language.

04:09I've studied language.

04:11That's just never how it works.

04:13Oh, it is okay, fine.

04:15Screw you for judging me.

04:19That's a deep cut.

04:21I don't know if anybody is gonna know

04:23where that comes from.

04:25- No, are you gonna give a hint or not?

04:28- That comes from a comedy album.

04:31- Okay.

04:34- That's it, that's just a hint.

04:35- That's a hint.

04:36- All right.

04:37- At the end of the show, if either of us remembers--

04:39- Which will not happen.

04:41- We were sure.

04:42But don't worry, go to the YouTube comment section

04:45or if you're a patron, go to the comment section of this

04:48on Patreon and maybe someone will have come up with it.

04:52- Yes.

04:53- Or you can at least ask the question,

04:56remind us to explain it and we'll pop on.

05:00We'll make how they dance pop on and explain it.

05:02Anyway, back to atonement or the atonement.

05:07- Yes.

05:08- Maybe we should start by just talking about

05:11what it means. - Where it's coming.

05:16- Yeah, I don't know where does it come from?

05:19- So, yeah, it's a translation of mainly a Hebrew word,

05:23but also there's a related Greek word.

05:26But you, 'cause you have in like the King James version,

05:30you have atonement seat and you have all these other words

05:33related to atonement and let me see King James version

05:37and they shall eat those things where with the atonement

05:40was made to consecrate and to sanctify them,

05:43but a stranger shall not eat thereof

05:45because they are holy.

05:47So, like atonement is a word that we find in the Hebrew Bible

05:50and there it's based on a verbal root kafar,

05:53which can mean in one of the, what's called a stem

05:58to smear with pitch.

06:03- Oh, okay.

06:04- So, the ark of the Noah's ark,

06:08what he does to the outside of it is kafar it with pitch

06:14in order to make it waterproof.

06:16- Right. - Ish.

06:17- Pitch is like asphalt or--

06:20- Tarrr, tarrr, tarrr. - Yeah, something like that, yeah.

06:23And, but there's another stem, the PL,

06:27where it is used to mean something like a P's or make a men's,

06:32put in a state of, and the PL is what's called

06:36the factative stem, where it means to put something

06:40into the state of being X.

06:42So, put in the state of being smear with pitch.

06:46So, but the idea seems to be to cover over breaches.

06:51- Okay. - To seal up.

06:53- Right. - The--

06:54- Not make sticky? - No, not make sticky.

06:58But that, by figurative extension,

07:03it has to do with repairing these breaches.

07:07- Right. - And so, the idea seems to be

07:11that it is a way for humanity to re-establish,

07:16to be reconciled with deity through these offerings

07:19and all that kind of stuff.

07:21And there's a lot that goes into how in ancient Israel

07:26and Judah, they understood the nature of this breach,

07:30the mechanism for its repair and that whole conceptual

07:35framework that makes up what they would have understood

07:39as atonement.

07:40Now, they don't really talk that much about atonement

07:44in the theology of the Hebrew Bible,

07:46but once we get to the New Testament,

07:48we have, I think, two verses that use a word

07:52that could be translated atonement.

07:56- Okay. - One of them is--

07:57- Two is not many.

07:59- Well, yeah, and it depends on your translation as well.

08:02So, we have Hyla Styroion in Romans 325,

08:09and that's translated in the King James Version,

08:11propitiation and atonement in the NRSV,

08:16U.E. and a lot of other translations.

08:21But the idea is the place of atonement.

08:25- Okay. - And then, I think we have

08:27in Hebrews 217, what is the word that we have there?

08:32We have Hylascomai, which means to pardon or be propitious.

08:37So, reconciliation is how the King James Version

08:41translates at atonement in the NRSV, U.E.

08:44So, they're kind of somewhat related in the Greek,

08:48but the idea of atonement is really a framework

08:53for understanding this reconciliation

08:58that is achieved, that in the New Testament

09:01is achieved by Jesus.

09:03- Right. - And--

09:04- I think this is one of the reasons it's critical

09:06to understand that the Bible is not univocal,

09:09and within cognitive linguistics,

09:13we talk a lot about metaphor theory,

09:15because most languages, metaphorical,

09:18there's an argument to make that all languages metaphorical,

09:20but in a general sense, most languages, metaphorical,

09:24because what we're generally doing

09:26is trying to communicate in the most efficient

09:30and effective way possible.

09:32And a lot of times, we're trying to communicate

09:34about things that are rather abstract,

09:36and so we commonly use more concrete metaphors

09:41as analogies in order to communicate more efficiently

09:46and effectively about abstract things.

09:49So, we can plot or map certain abstractions

09:54against more concrete schemata, or schemata,

10:00or schemas, if you like.

10:03And the idea there is to just take something

10:05that's a little more complex

10:07and make it a little more easy to understand.

10:09So, for instance, we talk about temperature

10:11going up and down.

10:13Temperature doesn't go up or down.

10:17It's a question of molecules vibrating

10:20more rapidly or more slowly,

10:22but we map this notion of temperature

10:25against a thermometer, basically,

10:28and the mercury goes up or down,

10:31and the numbers go up or down,

10:34and so we talk about temperature going up or down.

10:36So, that's a way--

10:37- I think one of the,

10:38it's interesting that you chose that metaphor specifically

10:41because I believe if someone could correct me,

10:44but one of the guys who was originally making thermometers,

10:49was it Mr. Fahrenheit himself?

10:51I don't know, but actually flipped it

10:54from the way we think of it.

10:56- Oh, really?

10:57- He had cold numbers at the top and hot,

11:00and it got hotter going downward.

11:03- Oh, really?

11:04- And I don't remember quite how that worked.

11:06Anyway, it would have blown all of our minds.

11:11And yeah, but yeah, you're right.

11:14We think of North as up a lot of the time,

11:17and that's just an arbitrary decision about,

11:20or maybe not entirely arbitrary,

11:23but there's no reason why North is up on the Earth

11:26and South is down other than perhaps

11:29some sociopolitical choices made in order to--

11:34- Well, even that relies on another image schema.

11:38Up as good, down as bad.

11:39- Right.

11:40- Up as healthy, down as sick.

11:42Like, there are all kinds of these things.

11:44And when it comes to atonement,

11:47this is a complex constellation of ideas.

11:50And so, what you really want is a way to take this

11:54and say, think of it like this.

11:57And that's a way to say all this complexity,

12:00we can distill it down to something that's simple.

12:03And so, that is your atonement theory.

12:06And the problem is every different author

12:10of a biblical text was also using their own theory

12:15of what was going on.

12:16And when they talk about them,

12:17they talk about them according to their own

12:19idiosyncratic conceptualizations.

12:22And so now we gotta look at this cacophony

12:25of conceptualizations and somehow find a way

12:29to harmonize all of it.

12:32And so we have different models or theories of atonement.

12:37And usually it comes down to what do we want to emphasize

12:41and what do we want to kind of push to the back?

12:44- I want to get very basic about sort of the concept

12:49that we're usually talking about

12:51when we say the word atonement in this context.

12:55Because what we're usually talking about

12:57is something along the lines of it,

12:58and maybe you'll find better words than I am,

13:01but something along the lines of humans being reconciled

13:06or made at one with God through Jesus

13:11in some mechanism that has to do with Jesus.

13:15- Yeah, I think if we take as the foundation

13:17what it says about Jesus in the nativity,

13:21you will name him Jesus

13:23because he will save his people from their sins.

13:27In what sense does Jesus save people from sins?

13:30What is the mechanism, what has sin done to us?

13:35How does that affect our relationship with God?

13:38And what does Jesus do to repair whatever has gone on there?

13:43And one, probably one of the earliest ones,

13:47the one that I think is kind of explicitly made in Mark,

13:50at least in one of the more idiosyncratic conceptualizations

13:55that Mark presents is the ransom theory.

14:00The son of man came to give his life as a ransom for many.

14:05And I think this is probably one of the earliest

14:08because we already have the idea of ransom

14:12in not only the Hebrew Bible,

14:15but elsewhere in the New Testament,

14:17but what a lot of, and redemption is associated with,

14:21with ransom.

14:24- But not redemption in some sort of like moral way or something,

14:29but like redemption is in literally,

14:31I'm redeeming this person for the money

14:36you're giving me or something.

14:37Like we're talking literal ransom.

14:39- Well, like that's the metaphor.

14:42It's just like we're being,

14:44someone's being held hostage.

14:46- Yeah, and then someone else pays and the hostage is released.

14:51- Yes, so to ransom means to buy back.

14:55And so the idea is that somebody is at some distance

14:59from their people, whoever,

15:02whatever the exact nature of their relationship,

15:05and they need to pay money to get them back.

15:08Now, one of the guiding frameworks

15:12for the concept of redemption in the Hebrew Bible,

15:15is enslavement.

15:17Like it develops based on the post-exilic notion

15:22that the exile was God's selling their people

15:27to another nation and that other nation's gods.

15:30And then the return from exile was God's redemption

15:34buying back their slaves from the other nation.

15:39So we were sold to the other nation

15:42and now we're being redeemed.

15:43God has paid the ransom so that we can come back

15:46and we can be enslaved to the benevolent master.

15:50So you see this in Deuterot Isaiah quite explicitly

15:54that they were sold into slavery on buying them back,

15:57not manumitting them,

16:00but buying them back from the wicked slave master

16:04so that they can serve the benevolent slave master.

16:08And we see this in the New Testament as well.

16:11Paul talks about this a lot as well,

16:15that you were bought with a price

16:17and you have become enslaved to Jesus

16:21and he repeatedly identifies himself as a slave of Jesus.

16:26And so the ransom theory,

16:28while when people talk about it today,

16:31they generally kind of allied the enslavement dimension

16:36of it, but the idea is that Jesus' death

16:40paid the ransom.

16:42And one interesting thing to point out

16:45is that some early Christians seem to think that the...

16:48And so instead of exile, it's sin or Satan.

16:53And so Jesus paid and Satan said,

16:57"Thank you, here's your change."

16:59In other words, the ransom was paid to Satan,

17:02to the devil.

17:04And so the devil was like, "Here are your people back."

17:07- Yeah, this stems from this idea

17:09that somehow the devil was in charge of the world

17:14and somehow owned humanity in some way, right?

17:19Is that sort of the idea?

17:22- Yeah, you have the devil as the god of this world

17:26in some sense in different parts of the Bible

17:28and as kind of the master of sin and all that,

17:33when you fall into sin and you are subject to death,

17:36you are basically subject to the devil.

17:40And so, and if you extrapolate out

17:44the logical end of this framework, it's like,

17:46so God is like, "Here, you're gonna be born

17:49"so that you can be enslaved to the devil."

17:53And then I'm gonna, but I'm gonna redeem this coupon

17:58later on, so go be with the devil for a while.

18:03And this was challenged by a lot of folks

18:06who were like, "Hey, do we really want to suggest

18:10"that Satan has that much power

18:12"and that this is a transaction between Jesus and Satan

18:16"where Jesus is like, "Here is what I owe you."

18:19And the devil is like, "Thank you very much."

18:22There were folks who were like, "Ah, that's dumb."

18:26And the Gregory of Nissa apparently used the metaphor

18:31of a divine bait and switch.

18:33Yeah. Where Jesus's humanity was the bait

18:38to deceive Satan so that he could be paid back.

18:43So it's-

18:44And it's almost the idea of,

18:45and I think we'll encounter this a lot

18:49as we talk about the concept of redemption

18:54or of atonement.

18:59But it's like only the divine

19:04could actually redeem humans.

19:09But somehow, I think I also was looking a little bit

19:15from Gregory of Nissa.

19:17And the explanation that I read about

19:20was basically just that sort of,

19:25Jesus sneaks divinity into Satan's realm

19:30and that is, and it's like the bait and switch is,

19:36Satan thinks he's getting the best of the mortals.

19:39And then Jesus is like, "Sike, I'm actually divine.

19:42"I'm out."

19:43And a bit of a Trojan horse.

19:46Yeah, yeah, exactly.

19:48He's like, "Oh no, don't take me, gotcha."

19:53You released all of the other humans for nothing, idiot.

19:56Makes me think of, do you remember the Steven Seagal movie?

20:02I wanna say, was it Under Siege where he was on the train?

20:06No, Under Siege was on the submarine.

20:10Yeah, what was it where he was,

20:12the guy was on the train.

20:14Oh gosh.

20:15I can't remember what it is, but there's a porter

20:18who is like one of the goofy sidekicks

20:22for Steven Seagal in the movie.

20:23And at the end, he's got a gun and the bad guy confronts him

20:27and he's like, "What's in your pocket?"

20:28He's like, "I don't have anything in my pocket.

20:30"Step your ass!"

20:31And then pulls out his gun and shoots him.

20:34Oh man, now you just gave this episode a PG-13 rating.

20:39I hope you're satisfied, I hope you're happy.

20:41I'd like to think that's kind of the lowest common

20:45denominator of our show, but yeah.

20:48(upbeat music)

20:53All right, so there's the ransom view.

20:58And that was actually held for quite a long time.

21:02That was kind of the theological idea of the Atona.

21:05Yeah, I think that made an awful lot of sense to people

21:09'cause they were surrounded by a world

21:11where you had enslaved folks who would get sold

21:15and bought back, like it was in the air enough

21:20that it made it a very cognitively cheap,

21:25efficient way to communicate about this.

21:28And this is a period when most Christians

21:32are probably not as philosophically sophisticated.

21:35And a lot of these other theories start to develop

21:37as philosophical and theological sophistication

21:42begins to ramp up.

21:44Sure.

21:45And so particularly in the medieval

21:48and reformation period.

21:49So I think the ransom theory was probably just one

21:53of the easier things for everybody

21:55to gain some purchase on, get a grip on.

21:57And then we move on to, what do you have on your list?

22:02You said you found five different frameworks?

22:05Yeah, yeah, look, I read a bunch of things

22:09but the framework that worked well for me,

22:11there was an article on Medium

22:14by a guy named Andrew Springer.

22:19And it seemed like a good way of looking at it.

22:22Anyway, so the next thing he has

22:23is the medieval view Christ as substitute

22:27as written by Anselm of Canterbury.

22:30I think there's another one that I think we should talk about

22:34which is a slight variation.

22:37Well, the Anselmian one I think is related

22:42called Christus Victor.

22:46And I think that name is something

22:48that was given much later to this idea.

22:52But it's related to the ransom theory

22:53and the idea is basically that it's kind of leaning

22:57into the notion that Jesus got one over on Satan.

23:01This is Christ as victor over the powers of sin

23:05and death and the devil.

23:08And so this is all about him just enabling humanity

23:12to participate in the divine life

23:14because he was the one who won the gold.

23:18Well, I had seen this Christus Victor idea

23:22but the article that I was looking at had it

23:25and as sort of this Swedish theologian

23:29talking about it in the 1930s,

23:31you're saying it's an older idea than that?

23:33Well, I think he tries to make the case

23:36that this is a better way to frame the theory

23:40as it was understood by--

23:42The ransom theory.

23:43Yeah, by folks like Irenaeus and Athanasia.

23:46So I think he's saying we shouldn't call them

23:49ransomists or whatever.

23:50We should say it's a little closer to this

23:53since they were talking about this idea

23:55of Jesus' victory over sin and death.

23:59So 'cause these theories a lot of times,

24:02it's not like they were consciously saying,

24:06you know, I'm a proponent of the ransom theory

24:08back in the 4th century CE is,

24:11I think it's how we characterize

24:13what they're doing up until.

24:16Much, much more recently.

24:18So yeah, whether or not they would have distinguished

24:23the ransom theory from the Christus Victor theory,

24:26I don't know what we can say for sure,

24:28but that's one of the models that has been proposed

24:31for how to understand those early theories.

24:35Okay, let's get on to sort of substitutionary theory,

24:40which is the one that comes out of St. Anselm of Canterbury

24:46and maybe other sources.

24:50Yes, so this is 11th century.

24:53I think served as, he was the Archbishop of Canterbury

24:57from 1093 to 1109 when he died.

25:00Okay.

25:01But yeah, I have seen it referred to

25:04as the satisfaction theory.

25:07And so I think the idea is that Jesus backhands you

25:11with a glove and demands satisfaction from you.

25:15No, I will have satisfaction, demand satisfaction.

25:19Yeah, and the idea here is that Jesus' death satisfies

25:25the demands of God's justice.

25:30So if you wanna look at it legalistically

25:33or in some way human sin has offended his sensitivities,

25:38they are repaired, they're satisfied by Jesus' death.

25:44And then there's, yeah, and this relates to the next theory

25:49that comes up once we get into the reformation.

25:54Right, but it seems just because I like,

25:58I'm gonna be very open and honest with all of our listeners.

26:01Having done quite a bit of reading about this

26:05throughout my life, but also just in preparation

26:09for this segment, I have never felt like I understood

26:13what the hell we're talking about.

26:15Like I've never felt like I had a decent understanding

26:18of what is, you know, there's this sense

26:23that something is owed or something, you know,

26:25there is a debt to be paid.

26:28And I don't know what that means in terms of sin

26:31because to my mind, you know, the greatest sins

26:35are things like murder or whatever.

26:37And that is a sin against another person.

26:39So I very much understand if I steal something

26:43from you, I have created a disparity between you and me.

26:48And so somehow there is a debt there.

26:52And maybe, you know, because I've hurt you more than just

26:56the thing that I took, it's a greater debt than just,

26:59you know, if I take $20 from you,

27:02but you needed that $20 for a thing.

27:04Like the whole thing, I understand a debt that I owe you.

27:09If I kill someone, I understand that the some reciprocity

27:14makes sense between me and that person's family

27:19or, you know, that person, that person themselves

27:22even though they're dead.

27:23I don't know, but this is so much bigger than that.

27:27This is a thing between us and God.

27:30And I still really struggle to understand what that is.

27:36And is there a framework in the Bible

27:41that helps us understand this?

27:42Or is this all post-biblical discussion?

27:47- I think you have, you certainly have different ideas

27:52about what sin does to people socially.

27:57- Sure.

28:00- But I think what you've probably got

28:02is a way to try to offload the problem

28:07to something that is transcendent

28:11and to say this is God's telling us this.

28:17This is not our understanding of how we can get along best

28:23as a society, this is God telling us this.

28:27And obviously, ultimately, it is just people speaking

28:30on behalf of God's people coming up

28:33with their own ways to do this.

28:35But then once you get into the Persian period

28:39and you've got the problem of evil is becoming a big question

28:42and people are wondering why do good things happen

28:45to bad people and bad things happen to good people.

28:47And then you develop this notion that all of the accounts

28:52will be squared in the afterlife,

28:54whether that means reward or punishment.

28:57Then you're kind of creating this alternative reality

29:01where all of this is ultimately being controlled

29:05and where all of this will ultimately be resolved.

29:09And so I think it's that creation of these alternate realities

29:14that is kind of the fulcrum of all of this.

29:19We've created these realities,

29:22we're passing them on to the rising generations,

29:26they've got to deal with them in ever changing circumstances

29:29and cumulatively, they're just adding more and more

29:33to these alternate realities.

29:35And I think the people just start thinking

29:39in more general terms about how to unify all of this,

29:44how to make this all make sense in a way

29:47that works out best for the people

29:51who are doing what we determine they're supposed to be doing.

29:54Because in pre-exilic Israel

29:58and even to some degree with like the Sadducees

30:01and in Job and things like that,

30:03it's kind of like, hey,

30:05to quote the great poet, shit happens.

30:10And you're just serving God

30:14so that you'll have good things happen to you in life maybe.

30:18And then that's it.

30:20And then that's the end of things.

30:22But once we project everything

30:27into these alternate realities,

30:29I think that makes for a larger scene

30:33and a larger backdrop.

30:34And now we've got to fill that

30:36with we've got to unify that

30:39with everything that's going on here.

30:41And yeah, people have to just,

30:44you know, they're reading the scriptures

30:46and they're interpreting it in ways

30:49that make the text of the Hebrew Bible

30:53and the New Testament meaningful and useful to them.

30:55And they're just coming up with different frameworks

30:58for unifying it all.

31:00- Yeah, I mean, I guess there's this idea

31:01that somehow our sin separates us from God right now.

31:06And so somehow we need something,

31:12some mechanism to at one us with God.

31:18And I, okay, so the substitution we need to get back

31:23and that we're not going to get through this thing

31:25if we're not careful.

31:27- Yeah, well, it was always taking a bigger bite

31:31than we could chew.

31:33- Yeah, we could just go on and on forever.

31:36And neither of us is a theologian.

31:40So that's a tricky thing as well.

31:45But the substitutionary thing is basically somehow,

31:48and correct me if I'm wrong,

31:50it's something like Jesus was able to satisfy

31:55in some way the debt that our sin accumulated to God.

32:02- Yeah, whether you understand it in a legalistic sense

32:09or in an honor shame sense,

32:11that that's one way people understand it as well.

32:15What Jesus does is Jesus is the substitute for what we owed.

32:20So Jesus steps in and takes place,

32:24takes the place of the debt that we cannot pay,

32:28which leads us in the Reformation period

32:32to penal substitution theory, and...

32:36- Not, oh my gosh, my brain immediately jumps to penile?

32:41No, penal, well, NAL.

32:43- My brain jumps to what league you've been playing in?

32:46- California penal, so that's Major League.

32:50But this is the idea that it is the punishment

32:57that Jesus takes on in place of us,

33:02satisfying God's wrath and justice.

33:08So it's not just separation, it's not just like God's like,

33:12oh, I missed those guys.

33:13It's that God is like, I'm coming for you

33:16because of what you did, and Jesus steps in the way

33:20and takes the punishment, penal substitution as the idea.

33:26- So it's like the oldest child

33:29who doesn't let dad beat his younger siblings or something.

33:34- Something like that, yes.

33:37And we talked about Romans 3.25, God presented Christ

33:42as a propitiation, which could be the idea

33:48of the substitute for the target of God's wrath.

33:53He was pierced for our transgressions, is Isaiah 53,

33:59according to a Christological interpretation

34:03of that passage that originally had nothing to do

34:07with the future messiah.

34:10But all these are ways to interpret these different passages

34:14that are coming at the idea from different angles.

34:17And I think if we could go back

34:21and actually talk to the authors of Isaiah or of Mark

34:24or of Romans or whatever and be like, all right,

34:28tell me how you would answer these questions.

34:31Like they would not come up with the theories

34:33that we come up with.

34:34- You would be entirely different. - You would be entirely different.

34:37- No, because ultimately what folks like Calvin were doing

34:44is looking at the whole of the text

34:47and trying to unify at all.

34:50And of course you have to give priority in preference

34:52to certain passages and you have to subordinate others.

34:56But ultimately like Paul, Paul didn't really care

35:00about any of the other things that folks were saying.

35:03Paul was gonna be Paul and you know,

35:07the pastoral epistles and Colossians and Ephesians

35:11and maybe 2 Thessalonians, they weren't even Paul.

35:14So, but yeah, it would be interesting

35:18to be able to talk to those folks and be like,

35:21if you could just break it down.

35:23- Yeah, just settle a bet for me.

35:26- Yeah, so but penal substitution theory

35:30is yeah, very Calvinistic where God's wrath

35:35plays a central role in this.

35:39- And so yeah, now we're getting very much,

35:43rather than a sort of idea of God's honor

35:48being reconciled, it's that there is a,

35:53like you said, a legalistic idea here

35:55where an infraction has been committed,

35:59there's a set sentence for that infraction

36:04and rather than us having to do that,

36:09Jesus somehow stepped in and I don't know,

36:13again, I don't know what the mechanism is,

36:16like what Jesus, I mean, I guess it was a death.

36:19- Well, it's a death on the cross, yeah.

36:22- But other people died on the cross

36:23and it didn't do anything.

36:24So that doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

36:28- Well, his death was probably amplified.

36:31- It was special, it was special.

36:33- Yes, God was like, we're gonna,

36:35this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it's gonna hurt me

36:38and that's kind of the point.

36:39Now I'm quoting a Batman comic book.

36:43- There you go, you're in.

36:44- When Joker kills Robin beats him to death with a crowbar,

36:47he says, this is gonna hurt you a lot more than it hurts.

36:50(laughing)

36:53- Joker kills Robin?

36:55- Yeah. - Spoiler alert.

36:56- Oh God, this is from like, what, 89 or 90, 91,

37:01something like that, this is--

37:03- I've never read a comic book in my life.

37:06- Oh, gosh, I know.

37:08- I'm leaving for comic on tomorrow.

37:10- I'm a heretic in all of the ways, Dan.

37:12I understand that.

37:13(laughing)

37:15- But we have even more.

37:17- Oh, okay, more--

37:18- Wait, but wait, there's more.

37:20- Don't stop now.

37:21- Yeah.

37:22Tell them what else they get, Dan.

37:25- Yeah, they get a Christ as an example,

37:30as a moral influence.

37:33- Yes, the moral influence theory,

37:35I was about to say moral influencer theory just to--

37:37(laughing)

37:39Just to be fun, but--

37:41- Yeah, sure, yeah.

37:42- Jesus on his TikTok, like, hey, Christian gang.

37:46- Oh gosh, they're doing that with AI now.

37:50- I know.

37:51- Oh gosh, and it is so bizarre

37:54to see, you know, the one I,

37:57'cause they're using a lot of the Gen Z slang

38:01and everything, so I think it's so funny

38:03when they've gotten, no, not Noah.

38:05Moses, he's like, the sea has been split

38:08and people are like, oh.

38:10And he's like, I told y'all, trust the process.

38:13And I was like, oh my gosh.

38:16- Jesus has mad TikTok riz, y'all.

38:18- We are in the dumbest timeline.

38:21(laughing)

38:23Anyway, talk about the moral influence thing.

38:26- Yes, so the idea here is that Jesus' death

38:29demonstrates God's love and this inspires humanity

38:34to repent and to live morally.

38:36So the main deliverable is this inspiration,

38:40this moral influence on humanity.

38:42So it is less about satisfying divine justice or wrath

38:47or paying the ransom and more about offering a catalyst

38:51to the transformation of the hearts of humanity.

38:55And in a way, this is kind of taking what

38:57some biblical authors suggested the purpose of the law was

39:02and saying that's the purpose of Jesus' atonements.

39:08- Okay, so can I ask a question about that?

39:10- No.

39:11- Yes, you may.

39:12(laughing)

39:14- My, I guess my question is just when?

39:16Can it kick in ever, please?

39:18- Because I would very much like for,

39:21look, I'm very happy for Jesus' atonement

39:25to mean that everyone sort of takes his example

39:29and is acts nice to each other.

39:31- Yeah.

39:32- Just any time, just kick it in.

39:34- Yeah.

39:35(laughing)

39:35- Any time now.

39:36That would be great.

39:37- Yes, these days you have,

39:40we are just a couple of days removed

39:42from another one of those, oh shoot,

39:45now I don't even remember the organization, Jubilee.

39:48One of the Jubilee things with Maria Hassan,

39:52where you had people who were up there like yes,

39:56I'm a fascist.

39:57- I am.

39:58- 100%.

39:58- Yeah.

39:59- And they're like, I'm Catholic.

40:01And oh my, and then you've got, got fired.

40:06And now he's raising money on some GoFundMe light place

40:11and a bunch of people are like, we gotta support our own.

40:16And it's like, your own what?

40:18- Yeah.

40:19- If that's your own, you're in trouble.

40:21- Yeah.

40:22And so.

40:23- That's bad.

40:24- To the degree that the fourth commandments means

40:29you are a representative of Jesus

40:31and don't do stupid stuff while you are bearing Jesus's name,

40:35there's an awful lot of commandment breaking going on

40:39these days.

40:40So yeah, that's probably a strike

40:42against the moral influence theory.

40:44- We had the WWJD bracelets for a while,

40:49but that didn't stick.

40:51- Didn't seem to move the needle much on that.

40:55- No, no.

40:56- All right, well, and that kind of brings us up to today.

41:00That's, those are sort of the main theories

41:03that we've had thus far.

41:05It seems, I'm still a little mystified.

41:09I'm gonna be honest, you haven't gotten me there.

41:13- So just in terms of like understanding,

41:16well, I mean, I understand what each of these theories is.

41:20I just don't understand what we're talking about.

41:23- Well, we didn't even get to governmental theory.

41:25- Ooh.

41:26- Or the scapegoat theory, which is the idea,

41:31it's the mimetic theory.

41:34Rene Girard, based on his anthropological insights,

41:41the idea is that Christ's death exposes

41:44and breaks the cycle of scapegoating violence

41:47in human society.

41:48So as the innocent victim, he reveals the injustice

41:53of scapegoating and reconciled.

41:55- But isn't he literally in this case a scapegoat?

41:59- The scapegoat, I didn't come up with the theory.

42:02I'm just, I'm just pointing out there

42:04are other theories out there.

42:05- Oh, okay, well.

42:07- And then the governmental theory is basically like,

42:09there's this bureaucracy of righteousness and morality,

42:12and this is just part of the process, yeah, so.

42:17- I admit to being quite mystified by theologies in general,

42:23they all feel like they break down fairly quickly

42:29and easily when pressed even slightly.

42:31- Yeah, which, you know, I think it makes a lot

42:35of the folks out there who are so convinced

42:37that their particular approach is right.

42:41It's like, once you get into atonement theory,

42:44you see very quickly that you've got

42:45a lot of ground to cover and it's not looking good.

42:49- Okay, well, as is our tradition here on the show,

42:54I feel that we have not made anything better

42:58nor have we explicated this in any real way that's helpful,

43:02so. - We've muddied the water

43:04and now we're gonna scurry away.

43:06Now we scurry away, so let's move on to our next segment,

43:09Lost in Translation.

43:11(upbeat music)

43:13And today's Lost in Translation,

43:17we're literally talking about translation.

43:20And I think a lot of the problems with people

43:25getting in trouble with the Bible

43:30happens when people believe that their interpretation

43:35isn't an interpretation,

43:36but is rather actually just what the Bible says.

43:41- Yeah.

43:42- Yeah. - And that's, you know,

43:43your book talks about this at length,

43:47about the Bible doesn't say anything.

43:49But that's a tricky thing to explain

43:53in a short amount of time.

43:57But what we're talking about is just sort of,

43:59the Bible is, you know, the authors of the Bible

44:04we're trying to transmit meaning to other people

44:09in the form of written language

44:12and not everybody.

44:15And so yeah, there's the problem of just like,

44:19just that, I write words

44:21and then you read them in the same language

44:23and hope, and there's still plenty of opportunity

44:27for us not to understand each other just from that.

44:30- Oh yeah, I mean, nobody's ever been on a family text chain.

44:34Where they understood what everybody else

44:38was saying at all times.

44:40- Right.

44:41- I've got, I've got family in loss

44:44that I know I'm not going to understand their text.

44:49Like I hear the ding and I see the face come up

44:52and I'm like, here we go.

44:54I don't know what they're gonna say.

44:56So yeah, there's even people who, you know,

45:03people go to therapy to figure out how to learn

45:06to communicate in ways that their spouse can understand.

45:11Not that I've done that, but.

45:14- No.

45:16- Spoiler, I have done that.

45:17- Right, exactly.

45:18- Yes, so, but a lot of people don't understand

45:22the role of translation and what's going on

45:26because there are a bunch of decisions

45:28that have been made before you even get to a Bible

45:32that you can open and read.

45:34- Yeah.

45:35- And I just wanted to briefly go over some of the process

45:38of translating the Bible.

45:40And I was talking with you Dan prior to hitting record

45:44about how we could talk about what I was involved in

45:48which is translating the Bible into other languages

45:52that either don't have a lot of translations

45:54or don't have any translations at all of the Bible.

45:57But we also have Bible translations into languages

46:01that have a lot of translations.

46:02And, you know, the one that most of us,

46:04if you're listening to the show,

46:05have some grasp of, is English.

46:08And, you know, we've got hundreds and hundreds

46:10of translations of the Bible into English.

46:12And the process of creating one of those

46:14is very different most of the time

46:17from the process of creating a Bible into.

46:20I said Neva Clay when I was giving you an example

46:24and you were like, Neva, what?

46:26- What?

46:27- Which is a language that also,

46:31I think probably more commonly in previous generations

46:36was referred to as chilupi.

46:38But that's spoken to--

46:39- Nice.

46:40- I like both of those names.

46:41Those are my two favorite languages

46:44and they're the same language.

46:46- When you get to say names of languages like that,

46:49I mean, it's a fun job.

46:50But that's a language that's spoken

46:53in some of the grasslands of the area around Uruguay

46:58and Argentina and Paraguay.

47:02So, but anyway, there are a bunch of decisions

47:06that have to be made before even a translator

47:09decides how to translate a passage as well

47:11because they need a source text.

47:13And so, the first step for if you're gonna sit down

47:17and say, I'm gonna translate the Bible,

47:20which oddly enough, is something that I have done.

47:24It's a long process, but when you sit down to do that,

47:29you need a source text and there are a handful

47:33of different ways that you can go about that.

47:35If you wanna do as little work as possible,

47:38then you can just go find yourself a critical edition

47:41of the Hebrew Bible and a critical edition

47:44of the Greek New Testament.

47:46And then you have what is widely considered

47:49an acceptable base text, an acceptable source text.

47:53- Maybe tell me what is a critical edition,

47:56what separates a critical edition from a non-critical.

48:00One of them's like, I don't like what you're wearing.

48:03- So, a critical edition means that it's the kind of edition

48:09that a scholar could use to translate the Bible,

48:12but it's generally gonna contain

48:14what's called a critical apparatus.

48:16And this is where editors will go through

48:18and they will provide significant variant readings

48:22in the footnotes.

48:24And some people who don't know a ton about the Bible,

48:28if they flip through a critical edition

48:29and see that there are variant readings

48:32in virtually every verse of the Hebrew Bible

48:36and the New Testament, that might spoke them a little bit.

48:40But that these critical editions,

48:42there are also two different kinds of critical editions.

48:44We can broadly distinguish what's called an eclectic edition

48:49from a diplomatic edition.

48:51And so the Hebrew Bible mostly scholars

48:54use a diplomatic edition.

48:56And what that means is it is reproducing

48:58a single ancient manuscript.

49:02And then you just deal with it from there.

49:05And so for the Hebrew Bible, the Leningrad Codex

49:09from about 1008 CE is generally considered your starting point.

49:14And so a critical edition of the Hebrew Bible,

49:16like the BHS or something like that,

49:20is going to be reproducing the text

49:22of the Leningrad Codex, exactly.

49:25- I feel like a lot of our listeners

49:27were just sort of had their minds blown

49:30by the fact that it was a thousand years after Jesus.

49:35And that's the earliest text

49:39or that's the text that people are using.

49:42Like that's the earliest complete manuscript

49:47of the entire Hebrew Bible in Hebrew.

49:50- Right.

49:51And the Hebrew Bible, so, and if that's the case,

49:53then we're talking it's almost 2,000 years after what,

49:58when some of that Hebrew Bible

50:01was meant to have been written, right?

50:03- Yeah, very small fragments of it.

50:06But yeah, it's pretty recent.

50:11And so scholars who are going to translate the Hebrew Bible

50:15are going to compare what they're seeing

50:18to earlier editions.

50:21So one of the main things they're gonna compare to

50:24is what's known as the Septuagint,

50:26the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible

50:28because we have manuscripts that contain pretty much

50:32the entire Hebrew Bible in Greek translation

50:36that go back to around 325, 375, 400 CE.

50:41So we can move back six-ish centuries

50:46if we just look in a Greek translation.

50:49- But it's already been translated.

50:52- Right, and so when you see differences

50:54between the Leningrad Codex and the Septuagint,

50:56you've got to figure, well, is this because the translator

51:00may be interpreting it in a weird way?

51:03Or if it's a result of their source text

51:07reading differently in Hebrew.

51:09And so you have this continuum

51:12from what they call translator exegesis

51:14all the way to variant source text

51:16and what is most likely there.

51:19And there are a lot of times when people will say,

51:22I think the Septuagint had a different Hebrew source text

51:25and I think that Hebrew source text

51:27is probably more original than what is

51:29in the Leningrad Codex.

51:31And so you might decide I'm going to translate

51:34what's in the Septuagint rather than what's

51:37in the Leningrad Codex or you might go to the Dead Sea Scrolls,

51:39which are even earlier than most manuscripts

51:42of the Septuagint and point to some things in theirs.

51:46And there are a lot of places where scholars

51:47are in widespread agreement.

51:49This preserves an earlier reading

51:51than what's in the Leningrad Codex.

51:52So if you're translating the Hebrew Bible,

51:55you have to grapple with these variant readings

51:59from earlier manuscripts.

52:01So you have to be a bit of a text critic.

52:04In fact, the Jewish study Bible and the JPS Tanakh.

52:09So the English translation of the Hebrew Bible

52:12that is prepared by the Jewish Publication Society.

52:15As a rule, they are basing their text

52:18on the Leningrad Codex, on the traditional Masoretic text.

52:21However, there are a bunch of places

52:23where you just can't make sense of it.

52:25Where the Hebrew just doesn't make sense

52:28or we can tell that something has been lost.

52:31So even though it is a rule that they're supposed to stick

52:34with the Masoretic text, the Leningrad Codex,

52:36you find a bunch of footnotes where they're like,

52:38is we don't know, but the Septuagint says this.

52:43And so there is some punting to the Septuagint

52:47that takes place.

52:49And so even if you're just translating the Hebrew Bible,

52:53you have to be a bit of a text critic.

52:54And I don't think you can make your way

52:57through the entire Hebrew Bible without giving priority

53:02to a Dead Sea Scroll manuscript or a Septuagint manuscript

53:06or something like that here and there.

53:07So that's part of what goes into just getting the source text.

53:12Now, that's a diplomatic edition.

53:15Then you've got what's called the Eclectic edition.

53:18And the Eclectic edition is where you don't have

53:21a single manuscript, you're gonna cobble one together.

53:25You basically go through verse by verse and decide

53:28what manuscript reading is most likely

53:30what was written here, and we're gonna use that.

53:33And that usually means you are cobbling together

53:38a Greek New Testament from 200 different manuscripts.

53:42And some of those manuscripts may account

53:44for 70% of what you have, some of those manuscripts

53:47may account for one word of the New Testament.

53:50But this is why we need to be aware of all the thousands

53:54of manuscripts that are out there.

53:55So when you get a critical edition

53:58of the Greek New Testament, this is an Eclectic edition

54:02for the most part.

54:04You do have people who will translate into English

54:07Codex Sinaiticus or something like that

54:11where they will use the Septuagint as their diplomatic source.

54:15But for the most part, it is a critical edition

54:18which is cobbled together from all these different manuscripts.

54:22And they keep coming out with new editions.

54:24The kind of most authoritative ones

54:26are the United Bible Societies, which I think they might be

54:30in their fifth edition, I'm pretty sure they are.

54:33And then you've got the Nestle Alon,

54:35which is in its 28th edition.

54:37And so every time they have gone back over the manuscripts

54:42and been like, we now think that this preposition is right

54:47and this preposition, so you'll get little changes like that.

54:50- Right.

54:51- You're doing the New Testament,

54:52that's what you're translating.

54:54And that critical edition does not match

54:57any existing manuscript anywhere.

55:01So I think a lot of people would be surprised to hear

55:03that when we look at an English translation

55:05of the New Testament, that is a Frankenstein's monster

55:10of manuscripts of the New Testament.

55:13- Yeah.

55:14- So, but yeah, that's what you,

55:17and if you just reach for one of those

55:18to translate the New Testament,

55:20you could go all the way through

55:22and just rely on what the editors have given you,

55:26but you have a lot of folks who will go through

55:28and be like, you know what?

55:29I like this reading better over here

55:32for this particular passage.

55:33And usually translators, they don't have to like,

55:38for most translations, they don't have to make a case

55:41for why they gave preference to this reading

55:44over and against that one.

55:45But if they're translating for a group

55:48like for the United Bible Society or something like that,

55:52they usually have to provide translator notes.

55:54So if they deviate from a given critical edition

55:58of the New Testament,

55:59they've usually got to defend their decision

56:02to whatever group is overseeing their translation.

56:06So that's just getting the source text.

56:09That's before you ever set finger to key.

56:14You have to get a source text that you're gonna translate.

56:17So step one is figure out what your source text

56:21is gonna be.

56:22Yeah, it's so much more complicated

56:25than just taking, you know, Harry Potter

56:28and figuring out how to make it Turkish.

56:30Like it's as if 200 people wrote Harry Potter

56:35and then 8,000 people rewrote it,

56:39but like may have added their own thing.

56:41And then they, yeah, it's, wow, it's a lot, it's a lot.

56:46And then you've got to get into interpreting it.

56:48And that's where translators,

56:51most translators have a good background

56:55in biblical studies.

56:56They're aware of the controversies,

56:58at least a good number of them.

57:00They're aware of the traditional readings.

57:04They will rely on resources.

57:07Usually translators will compare, you know,

57:10they'll have all different kinds of translations up

57:12to see how it has been done in the past.

57:15And there may be, there's usually gonna be one or a few

57:18that they like that they're gonna kind of give preference to,

57:21but they will also often use other translator resources,

57:26like a translator handbook or something like that.

57:28And these will be kind of like commentaries,

57:32but commentaries intended to aid

57:35specifically the translation of the Bible.

57:37So there are different groups out there

57:40that publish translator handbooks on John, on Matthew,

57:45on Obadiah, on Haggai.

57:47And so a translator will get one of those.

57:50And every verse, they will, they may or may not consult this.

57:55And usually it's gonna be where they run

57:56into something sticky, where they're like,

58:00oh, well, I thought this was going this way,

58:02but I looked at these translations,

58:03they have something entirely different.

58:06What am I to make of this?

58:07And so you wanna go get a sense of where the controversy lies

58:11and then how you're going to solve that.

58:13If you're responsible with what you're doing,

58:16a lot of folks will just blaze on through.

58:19But the better translations are going to seriously engage

58:25with the conversation that is out there.

58:28So for instance, Robert Alter's translation

58:31of the Hebrew Bible is a very literary translation.

58:34He's a literary scholar.

58:37And so you've got a lot of discussion

58:39of the different options and why he's giving

58:43preference to one option over another.

58:46And he even published alongside of his translation,

58:49a book called The Art of Bible Translation

58:52where he discusses his methodology

58:54and why he answered certain concerns the way he did.

58:59- Yeah, because there are like a lot of the concerns,

59:05you could think, okay, well, I just translate it word for word

59:09and then we were done, but that's the worst idea

59:12because there are idioms and there are ideas

59:16being transmitted in a way and they're being transmitted

59:19to people in a context that doesn't exist anymore.

59:24- Yeah, absolutely.

59:25And then it's a huge challenge and there's a famous example

59:30of they were trying to do a translation

59:33into a First Nations group up in Canada, I think.

59:39I don't remember the name of the particular people group,

59:42but they were trying to translate lamb of God

59:46and these people didn't really know what a lamb was.

59:49- Right.

59:50- And I don't know that they had a word for lamb.

59:53And so the translators were tried to get an understanding

59:57of how are we gonna communicate this idea to this culture

60:02based on the very specific and comparatively limited

60:10kind of cultural domains that they were familiar with.

60:13And what they went with was,

60:18and I think to the degree they may have understood a lamb,

60:20they thought of it as a pet or more than something

60:24that would be slaughtered or sacrificed.

60:27And the translators decided that seal was closer

60:32to how they understood what they are,

60:38closer to what they wanted them to understand.

60:41- As cute animal metaphors go, sure.

60:44- So that I don't remember,

60:48I wish I remembered when exactly this was,

60:50it was a bit ago and what language it was,

60:52but the idea was, or the idea was seal of God.

60:57- There you go.

60:59- Yeah.

60:59And there's another example of an African language,

61:05tribal language where there was something about one's heart

61:09being full.

61:11I don't remember where the passage is,

61:12I think it's somewhere in Paul,

61:13but filling up somebody's heart or something like that.

61:16And in their culture, to have a full heart

61:19was to be greedy and selfish.

61:21You're hoarding everything for yourself.

61:23And so your heart gets fat.

61:26And so they didn't wanna do that.

61:29That would have given the wrong idea.

61:31And so they actually reversed it.

61:35And they talked about your heart shriveling

61:40in the translation because that meant

61:42you were giving of yourself.

61:44You cared so much about everybody around you

61:47that you just wanted to give

61:49and that caused your heart to shrivel.

61:51- Interesting.

61:53- When you look into how the Bible gets translated

61:55into different cultures, into different languages,

61:58into different circumstances,

61:59it's just so fascinating.

62:03What translators have to do

62:05to try to connect all these dots.

62:07And if you've never translated a text

62:10as long as the Bible,

62:11it's thousands and thousands and thousands of dots

62:15that you have to connect.

62:17And you have to try to be as thoughtful

62:19and as critical as possible with every last one of them.

62:23And it becomes phenomenally complex.

62:26- Yeah, it sounds almost infinitely complex.

62:30- It can be.

62:31- It's not really a thing you can do.

62:33- Yeah, no, we just admit that you can't actually

62:36translate the Bible.

62:37It's not really possible.

62:38- Yeah, it's impossible.

62:39Like there's another school of thought

62:43that talks about how the only accurate translation

62:46would just be to reproduce the source text.

62:48It's just like running through a copy or there you go.

62:51'Cause the instant that you are translating it,

62:54you're changing it because there are no two languages

62:57that have exact isometric one-to-one matches

63:01for every possible conceptual unit.

63:05It's just not possible.

63:06- And we can't know.

63:07I mean, you talked about the Lamb of God thing

63:10and you mentioned sacrifice.

63:13And I realized that my contextual context for a Lamb

63:17is it's just a cute little baby sheep.

63:20And I don't even think about it.

63:23It being sacrificed.

63:25I might think of it being slaughtered for food,

63:29but it means something different for it

63:30to have been sacrificed in a sort of ritualistic way.

63:35And that's something that our culture has no context for.

63:38- Yeah, yeah, there's so much, you know,

63:42it's funny when I was gearing up for this conversation,

63:47I ran a bunch of quotes through online translators

63:52and sort of played a game of operator

63:54where I would take it to German and then to Hebrew

63:57and then to Lithuanian and then back to English

64:00or whatever.

64:01- Yeah, to see what kind of nonsense comes out the other side.

64:04- And I wanted to do just regular things.

64:06And here's the thing.

64:07Some of these, now they're AI sort of run a little bit

64:11or they're, so some of them, if you put in a famous quote,

64:16it just translates it back to the famous quote.

64:20It knows the quote and just feeds that back to you.

64:23- Yeah.

64:23- Oh, okay, you've defeated the person.

64:25- That's why you can't really do the Bible

64:26'cause they'll just give you the King James version

64:28or something.

64:29- Right, right, yeah, exactly.

64:30I tried to do it with the Bible and it just came back.

64:32I tried to do it with John 3.16

64:34and I ran it through all these different things

64:36and then it came back and it was just like,

64:37exactly King James, John 3.16.

64:40And I was like, you liar, you're just lying now.

64:43But the one of the ones that was very interesting to me,

64:47I just took the quote, the John Lennon quote,

64:49life is what happens when you're busy making other plans.

64:54And I did it through, I think, three different languages.

64:58And when it came back, it said,

65:00and I actually ran it from,

65:02I actually, one of the translations,

65:05I did it in a different translator just to make sure

65:08that it wasn't that Google didn't catch me

65:11and just zip it back to the original.

65:14- Right, yeah.

65:15- And what it came back as was,

65:17life is what happens when you make plans.

65:20And that's literally the opposite meaning.

65:24- Yeah. (laughs)

65:26- But one can understand why the idiom was missed,

65:31why the idiom of that quote,

65:34the sort of the tongue-in-cheek gesture of the quote

65:38was missed in the translating it

65:41through all these different things.

65:42Because a lot of care is taken,

65:46a machine doesn't know how to take that care

65:49with transmitting meaning along with language.

65:54- Yeah, yeah, there's connotation and there's denotation.

65:57And the connotation is where a lot of the nuance is,

66:00but the connotation is often where we load up our intent.

66:05And particularly with idioms and things like that,

66:09where we assume that language is just A plus B plus C,

66:14and a lot of particularly with idioms,

66:16it is A plus B equals S.

66:19And you can't really teach a machine that.

66:22You can have it experience that.

66:26And in some way, that's kind of trying to replicate

66:28how humans learn language.

66:30But yeah, there's a degree to which

66:35that's just not going to work.

66:37And yeah, in the world of Bible translation,

66:42particularly in new and languages

66:44where you either only have a few translations

66:46or you don't have any translations,

66:48machine translation is a huge deal.

66:50They're trying to do machine translation,

66:53but the idea isn't just feed it into a machine

66:56and there you got your translation.

66:58It's do that and then go have experts comb through it

67:03and figure out where they have misunderstood

67:09or something like that.

67:10And you go back and forth between experts

67:13comparing the source text to the target text

67:15and then a general readership who is checking it

67:20for how readable and natural it sounds.

67:24And you would go through like multiple phases

67:27of these reviews to try to take what the machine

67:32has given you and either improve it on your own

67:35or after each cycle feed it back into the machine

67:39to get back something else.

67:41And the intent there is just to cut down

67:44the time of the translation from 10 years down to two years

67:49or maybe even one or something like that.

67:51So if time is what you're on the lookout

67:55for machine translation is something a lot of people

67:57are trying to make work more effectively.

68:00- Although the problem is that,

68:02I mean, famously Robert Frost, I think it was said

68:05that poetry is what's lost in translation.

68:08And I think machine translation would quintuple that effect.

68:13So there you go, I just to honor him,

68:21I actually translated, I did my translation operator trick

68:26with Robert Frost's most famous poem.

68:30- The Roadless Traveled One?

68:32- The Road Not Taken, yes.

68:33- The Road Not Taken, yes.

68:36- Maybe I'll close this out by reading

68:38the multiply translated last stanza of his thing

68:43which is close to what he originally wrote,

68:48but not quite there.

68:49So the translated and then re- and re- and re-translated

68:55version goes, I will tell this with a sigh.

68:59Somewhere, hundreds of years from now,

69:02two roads diverged in a forest and I,

69:06I chose the one less traveled by and that changed everything.

69:10If you know the poem, you know what's wrong,

69:13but there you go.

69:15Once again, thanks so much for that.

69:19That was a, I think it's just good.

69:23I think the good conclusion is just,

69:25yeah, the Bible is not something that we can look at

69:32as an infallible book because we don't even know

69:35what the book is.

69:36- Yeah, there's no single Bible.

69:38- Right.

69:39- There are Bibles.

69:40- Right, all right.

69:42Well, thank you so much listeners for checking in with us.

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70:02If you'd like to write into us,

70:04it's contact at dataoverdogmapod.com.com

70:08is what I'm trying to say.

70:09Thanks so much to Roger Gaudy for editing the show,

70:13especially this week,

70:14and we'll talk to you again next week.

70:17- Bye everybody.

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