Wrong, Time -- By: Warren Vanhetloo

Journal: Central Bible Quarterly
Volume: CENQ 14:4 (Winter 1971)
Article: Wrong, Time
Author: Warren Vanhetloo


Wrong, Time

Warren Vanhetloo

An “open letter” to TIME magazine concerning the “Religious” section for March 23, 1970, entitled “The New English Bible: Back to Beginnings”—you are wrong, TIME so wrong that any who look can easily see your mistake. Though it’s only an aside within parentheses, you really goofed!

Look in the third column on page 56. Your statements: “There may be less quarrel with the N.E.B. rendering of Isaiah 7:14, which in the King James Version (“a virgin shall conceive’)

had clearly prefigured the Virgin birth of Christ. Now, the meaning is more ambiguous: ‘A young woman is with child, and she will bear a son, and will call him Immanuel.’ But the R.S.V. helped pave the way for such a change two decades ago by translating the Hebrew almah as ‘young woman’ (elsewhere in the Bible it is used to describe young women who are clearly not virgins).”

Someone there should have caught that last statement, for many can quickly check it and question either your accuracy or motives. The more easily, because there are only nine references to look up.

Three of these are clearly unmarried women (Gen. 24:43; Exod. 2:8; and Psalm 68:25). Two are enigmatic musical (?) instructions (Psalm 46 title and I Chron. 15:20).

Of the passages to examine, neither Song of Solomon 1:3 nor 6:8 give any hint that these are “clearly not virgins” as you suggest. Both passages allow for admiration shown by chaste, innocent “virgins.”

The only passage really considered “uncertain” (TDNT, V, 831), Proverbs 30:19, must then be approached consistent with other uses. “The way of a man with a maid” would simply set forth the “wonderful” pattern of an inexperienced man with an inexperienced virgin.

Thus, you are 100% wrong when you say of the word almah that “elsewhere in the Bible it is used to describe young women who are clearly not virgins.” On the contrary, in all eight other uses the context clearly allows or demands reference to virgins. Aren’t such simple misstatements an embarrassment though!

...
You must have a subscription and be logged in to read the entire article.
Click here to subscribe
visitor : : uid: ()