The Vulture Has Landed

On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong announced, “The Eagle has landed.” As a newly minted high school graduate just a week past my eighteenth birthday, I was enthralled with the Moon landing as were millions of other fascinated people who watched on television. NASA had accomplished what John F. Kennedy had promised back in 1961: we put a man on the Moon. It seemed appropriate to call the lunar lander the Eagle given the symbolic connection to American ingenuity and power that had made the project possible. Everywhere you look, the eagle is emblazoned on American icons.

If the Israelis had put their man on the moon, they might have heard their astronaut say, “The Vulture Has Landed.” They might have if they had been channeling the symbolism of their ancestors from the days of the prophets. According to one Bible dictionary, in Old Testament Israel, “The vulture was appreciated for its size, flying ability, and cleanliness, so biblical references to vultures do not carry the same negative connotations as in modern Western culture. Actually, the griffon vulture can still be found in northern Israel and in the Negev Desert in southern Israel, so the idea isn’t as crazy as it sounds.

Who cares? I want to make a point about Bible translation as it relates to Bible study. Any time you try to take a thought from one language and transfer it to another language, problems arise. Word-for-word literal translation doesn’t always work. Translators face this issue constantly. For example, when they wanted to translate Isaiah 1:18 for a tribal language in Africa, the phrase, “white like snow,” was meaningless. The tribes’ people had never seen snow. They had seen hail occasionally, but the connection with frozenness was linked to negative ideas. They were familiar with chalk which is also white; however, chalk is used in some pagan ceremonies, so it too carries unwanted connotations.

I have written previously about the difficulties involved with taking the Bible literally. (See below) The examples here, vultures and snow, are two of thousands of translation issues. To get the clearest picture of what the original author was trying to say, we must get into the historical and literary context. When I wrote “The Best Version of the Bible,” I explained that all versions of the Bible reside on a gradual scale from stiffly literal, word-for-word translation toward a more relaxed rendering known as a paraphrase. It is not safe to say that the most “literal” is the best version. As I illustrated with snow in the Isaiah passage, a literal word-for-word translation may miss the mark completely. The trouble with the opposite end of the scale is that we must rely on the opinion of the translator as to what the message of the passage should be.

Because I have a fair knowledge of Koine Greek, and I am comfortable with the linguistic tools used to interpret Hebrew, I prefer to study as close to the original text as I can. When I do read an English translation, I prefer to sit somewhere on the border between the word-for-word and the thought-for-thought with a modern version that takes advantage of all the latest textual resources. But I did not begin this piece to recommend a Bible; I did that in “The Best Version of the Bible.” What I wanted to say here is that we cannot just read Bible words and apply our own connotations to them. We need context. For example, most translators have done this for us by translating the Hebrew nesher in Ezekiel 17 as eagle rather than vulture to accommodate our modern sensibilities.

There are countless examples of Bible teachers innocently building a theology on a misinterpretation of Scripture. This happens regularly with people using the King James Version without cross-checking the four-hundred-year-old English to see if it means what they think it means. The Elizabethan English of the KJV is almost a foreign language compared to twenty-first century usage. A misunderstanding is almost guaranteed if you don't clarify the centuries-old meaning of the word in question.

Bible study is not the only place where a misunderstanding can warp the interpretation of language. The American founding documents, though not Elizabethan, are ancient enough to present interpretive challenges. When Jefferson mentioned “pursuit of happiness” in the Declaration of Independence, his generation understood him to mean fortuitous circumstances, not levity. If we don’t know the literary and historical context of the written words, our assumptions may be way off base.

The best option for Bible study is to choose a reliable translation and find one that comes as a study Bible. That way you can take advantage of the scholarship necessary to understand the context of any debatable passages. But I want to end this by saying what I said previously: the best version of the Bible is the one the Holy Spirit illuminates for you individually as you read and pray for understanding. This underscores the necessity of praying for guidance before you read. Ask for an entrance into God’s Word revealed by God Himself. He promised He would do that. Why wouldn’t you want that? Maybe you will see a vulture land.

Related posts: Take the Bible Literally; Taking the Bible Literally, Part 2; Understanding the Bible as Literature; Six Day Creation; Why Am I Here?