Author:- Sean Finnegan November 5, 2015
Translators have historically held incredible power to influence millions of Bible-readers over the eons. Many impressive developments have occurred in the field of textual criticism and lexicology over the last century. Today we can access dozens of English translations, Greek interlinears, and lexical aids online for free. In no other age have Christians had better access to biblical tools for personal study than today. Even so, rather surprisingly, many Bibles contain wild distortions, especially on texts related to dogmas long ago etched in the stone of infallible tradition. The uninformed Christian walking into a local bookstore sees dozens of Bible translations lining the shelves and picks the one that best meets his or her needs—the Green Bible, the Extreme Teen Bible, the American Patriot’s Bible, the Catholic Holy Bible, the Archeology Study Bible, the Life Application Study Bible, and so on. The number of translations produced in the last sixty years is even more impressive.
Although most of these Bibles stay relatively true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek in most places, nearly all of them still have significant blind spots that subtly lean readers towards a Trinitarian theology. In what follows I intend to expose one of the smoking guns of text tampering as it relates to the holy spirit. I want to delve into the world of how translators go about their task, of how Greek grammar translates into English, and how theology consciously or unconsciously gets injected into translations.
In particular, I am interested in exposing one of the most flagrant (mis)translation practices found in virtually all English Bibles: rendering impersonal Greek pronouns as personal in English when referring to the holy spirit. What I present here is neither sectarian nor ground breaking. Anyone who can read Greek can verify what I am saying. I will cite mainstream Trinitarian scholars to backup these very points. Yet, since one cannot grasp the issue at hand without some cursory knowledge of Greek grammar, we will begin with a brief overview of the basics.
Gender and Pronouns in Greek Grammar
In English nouns do not have gender. For example the word “table” is neither masculine nor feminine. It is a thing not a person, an “it” not a “he” or a “she.” However, in Greek, as with many other languages, nouns do have gender. The Greek word for table “τράπεζα” (trapeza) is feminine. Thus, when employing a pronoun to refer back to “table” in Greek, one would say “she” rather than “it.” This has nothing to do with how masculine or feminine the table in question might be. One could have a rustic, manly picnic table, and we would still refer to it as “she” in Greek. However, when translating a sentence into English, we would change the word “she” to “it” since that is how English works. Here is an example.
Ἡ τράπεζα ἐστιν ἀγαθή ὅτι αὔτη ἐστιν ἰσχυρά.
The table is good because it (lit. “she”) is strong.
Even though the word “αὔτη” (afte) really means “she” we translate it as “it” in English because English does not use personal pronouns for things. So even if we usually translate gender out from most pronouns, we generally preserve the grammatical gender for neuter words. So if something is an “it” in Greek, it remains an “it” in English, but if something is a “he” or “she” in Greek, we change it to an “it” in English if the antecedent is a thing rather than a person. However, just like any language, Greek allows for breaking the rules in certain situations.
One such case occurs when a neuter noun is used for a person or a group of individuals.
In the following example Paul uses the grammatically feminine word “head” for Christ, yet when he uses a pronoun to refer back, he chooses a masculine one.
Colossians 2:19
καὶ οὐ κρατῶν τὴν κεφαλήν, ἐξ οὗ πᾶν τὸ σῶμα διὰ τῶν ἁφῶν καὶ συνδέσμων
ἐπιχορηγούμενον καὶ συμβιβαζόμενον αὔξει τὴν αὔξησιν τοῦ θεοῦ.
and not holding to the head (feminine), from whom (masculine) the whole body being supplied and held together through joints and ligaments grows the growth (which is) from God.
The words τὴν κεφαλήν (the head) are feminine, yet the relative pronoun, οὗ (of whom), is masculine rather than feminine. It would have been grammatically correct to use the feminine word ἧς (of whom), but since the antecedent, “head,” refers to a person (i.e. Christ), Paul broke the rules of grammar to communicate more naturally—after all Christ is not a “she.” This phenomenon occurs many times throughout the New Testament. Here is one more example:
Matthew 25:32
καὶ συναχθήσονται ἔμπροσθεν αὐτοῦ πάντα τὰ ἔθνη, καὶ ἀφορίσει αὐτοὺς ἀπ᾽ ἀλλήλων, ὥσπερ ὁ ποιμὴν ἀφορίζει τὰ πρόβατα ἀπὸ τῶν ἐρίφων,
and all the nations (neuter) will be gathered together before him, and he will divide them
(masculine) from one another, as the shepherd divides the sheep from the goats,
Here the phrase “τὰ ἔθνη” (the nations) is neuter, but Matthew refers to them using the masculine αὐτοὺς (them) rather than the neuter αὐτά (them). He does so because “the nations” are groups of people, not things, and it sounds more natural to refer to nations as masculine rather than neuter.
So, if the New Testament writers could bend gender from impersonal to personal when neuter words referred to persons, then we should expect the same sort of anomaly in reference to the spirit—if they really did believe the spirit was a person.
Key Texts Analyzed
What follows is a collection of key texts in which the holy spirit is referenced using pronouns in English translations. Every one of these texts is an example where one of the very best and most literal English versions—the NASB—chose to use personal pronouns to refer to the spirit. Yet, in every case the Greek words are actually neuter!
As we can see from these texts, the Bible employs neuter (not masculine) pronouns to refer to the holy spirit. However, due to an ambiguity in the Greek language, there are some instances where the neuter and masculine forms of a word are the same. Here are some relevant examples:
Romans 5:5 [NA27] Romans 5:5 [Literal] Romans 5:5 [NASB]
Each time the bolded word(s) could be translated “who” rather than “which” since masculine and neuter forms are identical in these cases. However, all we need to do is look at the noun to which the pronoun or participle refers to find out which is intended. In every instance, the noun is πνεῦμα (spirit), itself neuter, and this easily determines which gender the other word is. So, translators should render each of these in English as “which” in keeping with grammatical consistency. We will return to see how English Bibles translate these unambiguous texts in a moment. First we need to consider what the translation committees themselves set for standards.
Translator Standards
Since most people do not have any way of testing how trustworthy a Bible is, they depend on what the translation committees say they intended to accomplish. Here I will quote from just a few of the most popular Bibles in current bookstores to show what their translation philosophies are:
The Lockman Foundation (NASB)
The New American Standard Bible translation team adhered to the literal philosophy of translation. This is the most exacting and demanding method of translation, and requires a word-for-word translation that is accurate and precise, yet easily readable. This philosophy of translation follows the word and sentence patterns of the original authors so that the reader is free to understand God’s message as the Holy Spirit leads.
First published in its compete form in 1971, the NASB is excellent for Bible study because it aims at a precise translation of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. As such, it renders, where practical, the original order of words and phrases. In passages where this literalness produces unacceptable English, the translators used modern English idioms and indicated the literal renderings in marginal notes.”
The Biblical Studies Foundation (NET)
The NET Bible is a completely new translation of the Bible with 60,932 translators’ notes! It was completed by more than 25 scholars – experts in the original biblical languages – who worked directly from the best currently available Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. Turn the pages and see the breadth of the translators’ notes, documenting their decisions and choices as they worked. The translators’ notes make the original languages far more accessible, allowing you to look over the translator’s shoulder at the very process of translation. This level of documentation is a first for a Bible translation, making transparent the textual basis and the rationale for key renderings (including major interpretive options and alternative translations). This unparalleled level of detail helps connect people to the Bible in the original languages in a way never before possible without years of study of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. It unlocks the riches of the Bible’s truth from entirely new perspectives.
Committee on Bible Translation (NIV)
…the translators were united in their commitment to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word in written form…The first concern of the translators has been the accuracy of the translation and its fidelity to the thought of the biblical writers. They have weighed the lexical and grammatical details of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts.
National Council of Churches (NRSV)
Many of us pay scant attention to the Bible translation we use, and yet we all want the most accurate and readable translation available for our study and devotional use. That Bible translation is the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). Widely recognized by scholars and religious authorities as the most accurate translation, it is also the direct successor of the beloved King James Bible, following in that Bible’s tradition of elegant, readable prose. As a literal translation rather than a paraphrase, the NRSV leaves interpretation in the hands of the reader.
Notice how they are all committed to accuracy of translation. None of them indicates that their commitment is first to a creed or tradition over and above reliable translation. As a result, we should see these versions rendering the texts I listed above using impersonal pronouns, since that is what the Greek says. Let’s see how they do.
Putting the Translations to the Test
Imagine someone jumps online and accesses the most popular and well received translations to investigate the meaning of Acts 5:32 and they check fifteen translations:
After seeing that eighteen of these nineteen translations personalize the holy spirit by capitalizing Spirit (most capitalize Holy as well) and that seventeen out of the nineteen use “who” or “whom” to refer back to holy spirit, what would someone conclude? Of course, they would go with the majority. Besides, the only translations that differ on this point are the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ New World Translation and the Roman Catholic’s New American Bible—the very two sources that evangelicals and Protestants are trained never to trust! In fact, the New World Translation does not even appear on major Bible websites (or in BibleWorks), so access to it is limited.
What is so shocking is that the Greek very clearly reads “the holy spirit which God gave…” There is no ambiguity or confusing grammar to cloud the question. It is as plain as day, and any first year New Testament Greek student could easily verify it.
The most frustrating aspect of this chicanery is that these translations mislead honest- hearted men and women who simply want to read and understand the Scriptures. What is more, most Bible readers implicitly trust the scholars who produce translations in the same way that most people trust doctors or school teachers. This is partly due to the impressive verbiage we saw above in their translation philosophies.
The NASB team “adhered to the literal philosophy of translation” and required “a word-for-word translation that is accurate and precise,” yet, they literally did not translate the word “ὅ” as “which.” The NET boasts that its nearly 61,000 translators’ notes enable readers to “look over the translator’s shoulder” and make “transparent the textual basis and the rationale for key renderings (including major interpretive options and alternative translations).” However, when I look at the footnotes on Acts 5.32, I see nothing whatsoever indicating they flat out changed a word to make their translation more palatable. Ironically, Daniel Wallace was one of the primary scholars involved in the NET and his paper on this subject exposes this very issue. The NIV committee stated that they were committed “to the authority and infallibility of the Bible as God’s Word in written form,” yet they corrected the infallible Scripture in their translation to read “whom” instead of “which.” Isn’t a correction the result of an error?
But, if Scripture is infallible, why is the NIV correcting it? Lastly, the NRSV claims it is “the most accurate and readable translation” and that it “leaves interpretation in the hands of the reader.” Yet, in this verse (and many others like it), it obscures the meaning of the text and does not so much as leave a footnote indicating their decision.
So if the Greek is clear, why do nearly all of these translations get it wrong? Why do all of these translations think the simple word ὅ (which) is really ὅν (whom)?
Sola Scriptura and Perspicuity
From the time of the Protestant reformation to today, countless Christians have embraced the motto “sola scriptura,” a Latin phrase meaning “scripture alone.” The idea is that Christians can find whatever pertains to faith and piety in the pages of Scripture without depending on external traditions or authorities. This came up quite a bit in the battle between the reformers and the establish Roman Catholic Church. The Catholics claimed tradition was necessary for rightly interpreting Scripture whereas the Protestants argued people could understand the Bible without the Church telling them what it was supposed to mean. To this day the mentality of sola scriptura dominates the confessions and creeds of most non-Catholic denominations.
Sola Scriptura is, I think, a very good idea, but it can only be practical for the one who is willing to change his or her beliefs based on what the Bible actually says. Still, one will always need external help from translations, lexicons, cultural studies, etc. To be uncompromisingly sola scriptura would require someone to be able to read uncial manuscripts fluently without the aid of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek dictionaries. Even so, the sentiment has great force and it combines with another idea from the Reformation— perspicuity. Someone who is perspicacious can accurately see or grasp a matter. The idea here is that Scripture is clear and understandable by nearly everyone.
This mentality puts an incredible burden on Protestants to find their doctrines in Scripture. It will not do to say, “Well, the creed has the following…” or “The Church teaches that this means…” No, they must show the teaching in plain Scripture. This would all work out well enough if denominations were actually willing to evaluate their long cherished creeds in the light of Scripture, but, of course, they are not. The whole situation is doomed from the start, because the Protestant Reformation did not start from scratch and question each belief based on Scripture. Sure, there were a few, highly significant, doctrines that they put on the chopping block of biblical scrutiny and successfully eliminated, but many of their core beliefs were never up for discussion. For example, they never allowed the Trinity to be questioned and when people did apply sola scriptura to the dogma they found themselves on the chopping block.
However, now that Catholics and Protestants are no longer able to execute their fellow brothers and sisters on the charge of heresy, they have had to find new ways to deal with this thorny problem. This is precisely where the need arises for translators to monkey with the text. The issue comes down to pressure—pressure to make the Bible conform to the creed so that we can say the creed is biblical. Jason BeDuhn helpfully explains:
“For the doctrines that Protestantism inherited to be considered true, they had to be found in the Bible. And precisely because they were considered true already, there was and is tremendous pressure to read those truths back into the Bible, whether or not they are actually there. Translation and interpretation are seen as working hand in hand, and as practically indistinguishable, because Protestant Christians don’t like to imagine themselves building too much beyond what the Bible spells out for itself. So…there is a pressure (conscious or unconscious) to build up those ideas and concepts within the biblical text, to paraphrase or expand on what the Bible does say in the direction of what modern readers want and need it to say.”
But, this sort of circular reasoning cannot prove anything. The translators begin with the belief that the holy spirit is a “person.” As a result they go against their own stated translation principles to literally change the text from “which” to “who.” Next a reader comes along and, on the basis of all those personal pronouns, concludes therefore that the Holy Spirit is, of course, a “person.” We begin with a creedal belief and we end with one—and at the end of the day we have proved nothing.
We should not allow our doctrines to determine the text. To do so is like a doctor who believes that cancer is the root cause of all sickness. Someone comes to him for examination, and though the patient’s symptoms line up perfectly with the common flu virus, the doctor finds ways of convincing himself that cancer is the true culprit. Every test he orders comes back negative, but still he knows, in his bones, that chemotherapy is the right treatment.
When translators see that troubling ὅ (which) they ignore the negative results for the test of personhood, and merrily capitalize the “S” on spirit and put “who” anyhow. This is a smoking gun of translation bias and it is absolutely unacceptable. It does the exact opposite of what all of the translations say they want to do; it injects theology into Scripture and limits the reader’s access to what the text really says.
The fact that nearly all modern translations change the text so that it supports their doctrine about the third person of the Trinity is actually evidence that the Bible does not teach that the holy spirit is a person. This whole issue smacks of anachronism. Of course neither Jesus nor Paul would say something like, “God the Spirit” or “the third person of the Trinity” or “three persons in one essence” because this kind of language did not yet exist!
Pneumatology slowly evolved into full blown Trinitarianism over centuries of reflection. It was not until AD 381 that some Christians officially recognized the holy spirit as an equal person of God in the Constantinopolitan Creed. Since the theologians cannot find any of this terminology in Scripture, they tweak the translation to ensure compliance with their beliefs. This dastardly act needs to be exposed so that doubt can be cast on the doctrine of the personhood of the holy spirit. These mistranslated pronouns are like make-up covering a large pimple. If we can help people see through this deception, they just may turn away from the dogmatic deception that has held sway for so many centuries and instead simplify their piety and come to worship the true God and Father of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ, rather than some three-headed Cerberus.
This post covers how we should view the Holy Spirit as an expression and extension of Father God into our world and lives:- https://bibletruths1.wordpress.com/2023/06/08/the-spirit-breath-of-god/
Related to this subject:- https://bibletruths1.wordpress.com/2023/11/19/the-holy-spirit-is-missing-from-pauls-introductory-statement-in-his-letters/
Original PDF Document
Living as a Christian in this World 