Beeson podcast, Episode 451 Bill Mounce July 2, 2019 Announcer: Welcome to the Beeson Podcast, coming to you from Beeson Divinity School on the campus of Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama. Now your host, Timothy George. Timothy George: Welcome to today's Beeson Podcast. Well, we're recording this podcast today from my office here at Beeson Divinity School, and it's an absolutely beautiful, gorgeous spring day. I wish you could be here and see the flowers, the trees God has gifted us with this wonderful day. And we also have a very distinguished guest I'm going to talk with today on the podcast. His name is Dr. Bill Mounce. He's a distinguished scholar, a leader in the Lord's church, especially in the area of Biblical instruction and Biblical training. He has a PhD from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, an MA from Fuller Theological Seminary, he's done studies at Bethel College, at Western Kentucky University, a very distinguished scholar and leader. Welcome, Dr. Mounce, to the Beeson podcast. Bill Mounce: It's good to be here. Timothy George: Now I want to begin by asking you to say just a little bit about how you came to know Jesus Christ. Bill Mounce: I was raised in a Christian home, and it was always been a part of my life. So it's one of those kind of boring testimonies where I just, seven years old, Mom said, "Do you want to be a Christian, Billy?" And I said, "Sure." And it's been a pretty steady growth. There's some good years and difficult years, but it's been, it's pretty, an even growth pattern for me. Timothy George: That's a good testimony. You know, Billy Graham's wife, Ruth Graham, couldn't remember when she became a Christian, but she knew she knew Jesus, loved the Lord, but she couldn't record in her own mind a specific point where that started. But she like you grew up, she was a missionary kid in China, and grew up in a loving, devoted Christian family. So that's a blessing in itself, isn't it? Bill Mounce: It's a blessing because sometimes people like me wish they had some wild years that could really make a testimony zing. But I'm really glad I don't have the memories of a wild testimony. Timothy George: Sure. Bill Mounce: I'm thankful. Timothy George: Now we should say a word about your father, who is also now with the Lord, a wonderful scholar and leader. Tell us a little bit about him. Bill Mounce: Well Dad was ... Dad did a lot of different things, from being a Hell Diver in World War II, and a missionary in Guatemala. And then he went into education. He was in the second graduating class from Fuller, and went to Aberdeen as well. He had always really wanted to have an active role at shaping the larger picture. And so he did it academically as a scholar. He actually was on the first NIV translation committee. Timothy George: Oh. Wow. Bill Mounce: And so I think we're the only father, son ever to have been on committees. And then he went into administration and eventually the pastorate. Timothy George: Wow. Well, we want to talk about some of your own work on Bible translation, but before that, say a little bit about your experience as a student, particularly at Aberdeen, because you worked with one of the world's great, I mean great Biblical scholars. Bill Mounce: Yeah. Howard Marshall was my supervisor. And it was a very interesting experience. Dad had been there with AM Hunter. And they played golf every Monday, and that was how they did their meetings. [inaudible] professor. I went over with my golf clubs and found out that Professor Marshall was not that way. He is much more reserved ,but a phenomenal supervisor. And when he told you you were ready to write, you were ready to write. So there's a lot of assurance in that. Timothy George: We had him with us at Beeson. On one occasion, he taught a short term course, and I remember wonderful fellowship with him. He had a lovely spirit, didn't he? He was a Methodist, an evangelical Methodist in Britain. But that wonderful Wesleyan piety showed through. Bill Mounce: Right. He was a very unusual combination. That's why didn't fit in categories, because he was egalitarian, he was Wesleyan, and a suburbs, one of the best scholars in the world. It was always kind of hard to pigeonhole him. Anyway, we asked him once, we said, "Are you Armenian?" He goes, "No." And I go, "But you believe you can walk away from the Lord." And he goes, "Well, the Bible seems to say that." And he said, "Well that makes you Armenian." And he said, "No, I've never heard anything nice about Armenians, so I'm not Armenian." That was the closest thing to a joke I heard in two years. Timothy George: Right. Now I want to talk a little bit about your own work in Bible translation. You've mentioned this wonderful academic background you had at Aberdeen with High Howard Marshall. How did you get into the work of translating and producing Bibles? Bill Mounce: It started just because, I'm not a natural language person, and so I don't pick things up instantly. It was always frustrating to read grammars written by people who did pick up languages instantly. And that's probably why my grammar is so different. It's written for people that don't have a natural affinity. Thanks be the Lord that grammar is so well, and so people know about it. And so, I was running the Greek language program at Gordon Conwell when Wayne [Grudem] contacted me about being on the ESV. So it was through the grammar and my work at the seminary. Timothy George: You're unusual, maybe not unique, but you're unusual in that you've had a deep investment in two major Bible translations, at least, the ESV you just mentioned, the English Standard Version of the Bible, and the NIV, the New International Version of the Bible. Sometimes these two translations are posited as being at opposite ends, or at least adversarial. You've managed to somehow bridge that. Talk about that. Bill Mounce: I wish we would stop charting translations as different points on a line. Because translations have phenomenal overlap. I mean, I'd be curious sometimes to do a mathematical comparison of the ESV and the NIV. I would guess there's an 80% overlap. So it's not like they're totally different, but the ESV tends more towards replicating the words and making ... Leaving it up to you, the reader, to figure out what they mean. The NIV moves a little more towards meaning and a little more helpful to the reader. Bill Mounce: But my view as the translator is that my job is not to push my agenda, or even the push my view of what a Bible should be. My view is you figure out what the translation philosophy is, and then you be as consistent as you possibly can. Bill Mounce: On the NIV, I don't think I suggested any changes for about four years. I came on the committee in 2010 right before the ... We were finishing up the 2011. I mean, I'm sure I expressed myself, but I wasn't going to be [inaudible 00:07:04], "I think it should say this, or I think it should say that," because I hadn't figured out the rhythm of the NIV. And the ESV was so much in my head. Plus I was raised on the RSV. That whole way of speaking was everything in my head. But my job on the NIV was to figure out what the philosophy is and then be consistent. That's why I can be on both committees and be committed to what each Bible's trying to do. Timothy George: You mentioned the RSV. One of the guests we had at Beeson early in our life as a school was Dr. Bruce Smithscott. Bill Mounce: Oh wow. Yeah. Timothy George: What a great scholar, and what a great Christian. We so much learned from him on that occasion. He was the, I guess the chair of the New Revised Standard version of Bible. Bill Mounce: I believe so. Yeah, yeah. Timothy George: Professor at Princeton. You mentioned your textbook, which is widely used and much appreciated, Basics of Biblical Greek. So you're taking the New Testament text, [inaudible] Greek of the New Testament, and trying to help people learn how to navigate that. Bill Mounce: Right. Right. Timothy George: How do you write such a book? Bill Mounce: If I have a gift, it's to simplify complex things. I mean, I'm not an especially powerful writer or any of those kind of stuff, but I can simplify. And it started in Latin in high school. I hated Latin, sorry, Latin teachers, it just ... But I kept looking at the paradigm and going, "Well that's just wrong." And I'm of strong enough to say that. And so when I was in 10th grade, I started rewriting all the Latin paradigms, and then selling them for five cents apiece to my fellow students. Bill Mounce: I like to organize and catalog information. So when I came to Greek, for example, there was [inaudible 00:08:48]. That's an exception. That's an exception. And I go, "No, because if this word is an exception, and this other word is an exception, but they're both behaving the same way, they're not exceptions." What I started out on was trying to figure it out the real underlying rhythm of the language. And once I think I basically figured that out, then that's how I wrote the book. Bill Mounce: So it's written for people that aren't naturally good in language, and it walks them through in I think a simplified way. It's also, one of the things we found is that there's always this strange connection between students and their authors of their language texts. There's a personal connection, and it's strange. I've not seen it on any other textbook> But when I wrote it, there's a lot of me in it. And my dad told me later when he read the first edition, he told my mom, he said, "Oh no one's going to buy this book. I feel so bad for Bill, because it's just so personal." But that's one of its strong points. Timothy George: I think that's made it attractive to lots of students, including the students here at Beeson Divinity School. Now we require a lot of Biblical languages relatively speaking, there may be one or two seminaries with a course or two more, but not many. And people when we started these, and that was a commitment. If I wanted to change that part of the curriculum, which I don't, but if I did, I couldn't. I think the faculty would rise up in protest. Bill Mounce: Good for them. Timothy George: And people would say to us, "You can't require that much Hebrew and Greek of your students. Nobody will come." We found the opposite is true. They come because that's a strength and a priority. And they're really interested in getting into the texture of the word of God. Bill Mounce: Right. And when I would stand up to preach, I wasn't always right. I made mistakes. I had to correct myself periodically the next week. But I had to be confident that I had done my homework. And I don't know how you can stand up in the pulpit and say, "Thus sayeth the Lord," and not know Greek. I don't know how you do it. My Hebrew is much weaker than my Greek, but I have Paul House. And many times, a Beeson professor and ESV, fellow member, I don't know how many times I called Paul, said, "Will you please explain the Hebrew to me? I don't get it." But I had to know what God's words were if I was going to preach it with strength. I applaud Beeson for towing the line on the languages. Timothy George: It's a deep commitment. And to date myself, my first grammar in the New Testament was Meecham. That was a long time ago. He was a great leader of the church back in the early part of the 20th century and wrote many things New Testament. But he also has a little introduction to Greek. It's a very, very good book. Bill Mounce: But it's written ... The problem with Meecham's book, and my secretary once said to me, "How are you going to feel when you meet him in heaven? You better conduct yourself well in selling your own book, because you're going to have to meet professor Meecham someday." But it was written for a day and age where people did learn Latin in high school, and they did know their English grammar. And times change. Timothy George: They have changed. Well, talk a little bit about the work you've been doing now for some time. You're the president and the founder of Biblical Training. What is that? Bill Mounce: Biblical Training is, it's an online resource, and it's a nonprofit ministry. What our commitment is is to move world-class education out from behind the paywall into the church. There will always be seminaries, and I'm glad for that. There needs to be seminaries. We're not accredited, we don't want to be accredited. We're not going to compete with seminaries. But our concern is for people in the church that can't get to Paul House and Frank Thielman. We have 130 classes, 2,100 hours. Your Theology of the Reformers is there. Thank you. People can just pick and choose what they want to learn. Bill Mounce: We hear stories from all around the world of individuals or small groups or churches that pick it up as a formal part of their training for people. You know, you can have a really good Bible preaching pastor, but he's only got a half hour. And God's word deserves more than that. So our classes are designed for those people that want to go deeper. Timothy George: And it's international, right? Not just USA or North America. Bill Mounce: You know, I'm sitting here going through the list of the professors in my head. Most of them are American. And we have some stuff in other languages, but we don't have a real thrust to get things into ... We have some stuff in Hindi and Swahili, Arabic, Chinese, and a little in Spanish. But English is a Lingua Franca. I mean, we can push, and there's a lot of good stuff happening in northern India right now. Wherever there's persecution, God's spirit really works. And there's mass revivals going on and we are apparently the primary source of discipleship materials. So there's Hindi, but right next door, there's some other languages. So we just found that if we just really work on understandable English, we're addressing the bulk of the world. Timothy George: And lay people will be especially interested in this. Not only trained to clergy. Bill Mounce: Right. We have three different levels. What we call foundations is lay education. The academy is university level. And the institute is seminary level. But by being so careful at who we pick to give us lectures, we picked people like Paul House, who even though he's a brilliant scholar, can communicate in ways that anybody can understand. There's the church in Jackson, Tennessee, just down the road from you, a church of about 2,000. They have almost 200 people enrolled in a three or seminary program with our stuff, and Doug Stewart from Gordon Conwell is the Old Testament guy. It's all understandable. They can really get to it. Timothy George: Wonderful. Now you are here, you're speaking in our chapel today, and we're going to that in just a moment when we finish the podcast, but last night you gave a public lecture, do you really trust your Bible? For those who weren't able to be here or listen to you in person, what did you say? Bill Mounce: I make two busy points when I talk on this. And the first is to understand, when people say, "Oh, I can't be a Christian, how can you possibly trust the Bible? Really, you believe that?" I want people to understand that no matter what you are a Christian or Buddhist or a materialist or an atheist, everything is a faith system. At the end of the day, everybody believes. So a materialist believes there's nothing outside the observable order. And they can't prove it. And I don't want Christians to get boxed into a corner thinking, "Well, they know things. We have to believe them." So we talked about that. Bill Mounce: But mainly we talked about the attacks that are being made. The Bible is full of contradictions, that we got the wrong books in the Bible, issue of canon. I didn't get to textual criticism, but the idea that the Greek texts had been corrupted through the centuries, translations are different. How can you trust any of them? So I just pick what those major attacks are and then talk about them. Timothy George: Mm-hmm (affirmative). You know, so many of those criticisms, those attacks against scripture, are very old, aren't they? Bill Mounce: Yes, yes. Timothy George: Now they dress up in new guises. But you read Augusta, and he was wrestling with these same kinds of questions. Bill Mounce: I still remember at Fuller, I went to Fuller Seminary, and I came down, I was walking downtown Pasadena, and there was a big old sign in the bookstore. "Find here the books that the church fathers didn't want you to read." I thought, well, did they discover something new? No, just the New Testament apocrypha. And it seems like about every 10 years the same old arguments cycle through again. The current debate, there's been a few new things at it, but it's mostly just same old, same old. Timothy George: Yeah. How are we to understand something like gnosticism, for example, that was so powerful in the early church, and against which the church had to take a stand. It still has influence today, seeking in in all kinds of ways. How do we understand something like that, that kind of movement of a contra belief, let's say? Bill Mounce: Yeah. I think that Christians need to understand there's always going to be attacks. And they're always going to be kind of a sectarian, kind of a little narrow ... I think it was Luther who said that if you don't deal with whatever currently is being attacked in the Gospel, you're not defending the whole Gospel. That you've got to deal with what are those specific attacks? And so now it's translations and canon and stuff like that. But in gnosticism, I think the way to debate is to understand that it's going to come and they're going to be very fervent. Paul tells Timothy that the false teachers in Ephesus were devoted to their myths and endless genealogies, the same word that's used of a drunk being devoted to liquor. I mean it's everything to them. And you have to be on your guard. Bill Mounce: When I was pastoring, we had a heresy that Christ had already returned, and there was no future coming, and there were three of them. There were three. And they came in and they snuck into the church, just like they did an Ephesus, and they got into positions of leadership. They started having Bible studies, including my son was being affected by this. But it's that whole gnostic approach that we have this little piece of information that no one else does. And yet it permeates everything. And I wasn't ready for it. I didn't see it coming. And I remember talking to one of the guys, one of the three and I said, "Is it possible for you to teach a ..." Because they're really good Sunday school teacher. I said, "Is a possible for you to teach Sunday school without this becoming a major issue?" He says, "No." So they're absolutely devoted to it. And, and that's the gnostic, I think, mentality. Bill Mounce: Pastors just have to be aware of it. I had to stop my series, and I preached a three part sermon series on Jude, and I said, "This is what it means to fight for the faith." And with the elders' approval. I said, "Okay, here's the decision. You can believe whatever you want, but if you're going to teach in this church, you have to hold up the statement of faith and you can't insist on things that are contrary to it, and you can insist on things that are not in our statement of faith." That was how I had to deal with that particular problem, the three people left. But I wasn't ready for it. So I think that's ... You have to remember that they're out there. Timothy George: Your analogy of the drunken man speaks of addiction, and this is a kind of addictive behavior, isn't it? Bill Mounce: I think it is. I think it is. Because it's part of their definition of who they are. They're no longer a Christian. They're someone that's pushing this one narrow agenda. Timothy George: Let me ask you to go back to a topic we just broached early on, because you've been in both the ESV and then the NIV worlds, comfortably I think in both, appreciated in both. We hear a lot about this difference between formal equivalents, that would be more like the ESV, and functional dynamic, more like the NIV. What do those terms mean? Bill Mounce: Basically a formal equivalent translations try to retain the form of the Greek and the Hebrew. So you try to do a word for word translation. You stick as close to the words of the syntax as possible. If the Greek uses a participle, we try to use a participle kind of thing. A functional equivalent is more interested in the meaning that the author is trying to convey. And if the author used a participle, but if a noun does a better job in English, then the NIV will use a noun. One is more geared towards replicating the form, and the other one is more geared towards replicating the meaning. Bill Mounce: I'm uncomfortable with it. I'm comfortable two, with the two fold division, because there's so much more variety out in the Bible market today. I'm on a, apparently a one man crusade to ban the word literal. Because what people say, "What kind of Bible do you want?" Say, "Well I want a literal." "What do you mean by that?" And they've been taught to think literal means word for word and therefore accurate. My point is accuracy isn't in replicating words, it's in replicating the meaning faithfully. Bill Mounce: The way I look at it, I think there's really five categories. If you want to use the word literal, the only literal Bible there is is an interlinear. And then there's formal equivalent, good formal equivalent, NESV, ESV, a little bit the new CSV straddles the fence, but it's probably more formal. And then in functional, it's the NIV. Bill Mounce: My other concern is the NIV and the NLT are really different. And people tend to lump them together and criticize them. I read one article where he described the NLT and used it to criticize the NIV. And they're really different translations. The NLT is a natural language. It's how do we say this? And the NLT doesn't care whether it's a noun or whatever. Timothy George: And NLT is New Living Translation. Bill Mounce: Yeah. A really, really good Bible. I want to emphasize that. Timothy George: We have a colleague, Dr. Matthews, who was involved in that. Bill Mounce: Yeah. Yeah, no, it's, if you want to know what a group are really smart people think the Bible means, the NLT is wonderful. The NIV is much more restrained. It doesn't move nearly as far away from the Greek and Hebrew as the NLT does. So I just think you need to keep those categories different. Bill Mounce: And then my fifth category, there is no term for it. It's the message, which are, changing cultures totally, and just really, really different. Timothy George: I love to read Eugene Peterson's The Message, But I read it in a certain kind of way, and for certain kinds of purposes. In that sense, I'd say I like to be Biblically promiscuous. Usually from all these different kinds of translations, but with discernment, hopefully. And with a sense of seeking the accuracy of God's word. That's what we're after. Bill Mounce: I think we have these five different niches of Bibles, and they're significant niches, and they're important niches. I know some Bibles want to be the standard, and there's not get ever going to be another King James. There's never going to be one that one size fits all. We just have moved past that. But I think it's important for people to understand why the Bibles are different, and they're still trustworthy even though there are different, and then where are they comfortable? Where do they want to sit? What do they want to do with it? Timothy George: Now we're doing this recording, this podcast here in my office at Beeson, and hanging on the wall right over there, Dr. Mounce, is a portrait of William Tyndale, who in some ways is the great grandfather of us all, isn't he? Say a little bit about Tyndale. Bill Mounce: I've been told that about 80% of the King James is Tyndale. And I've seen the listing of so many of the expressions that are, actually we use today in modern culture. We don't even know they're from the Bible. They came from him. I mean, he was a gifted wordsmith, I would say an inspired wordsmith. When the King James came along, they had a ... It's kind of like the ESV had a really good base in the RSV. The King James folks had a really good base in Tyndale. Timothy George: They did. That's a good analogy. And you know, when you look at the King James version, which of course was the official approved version, came out in 1611, and you read the prefatory material, they talk about all these great people that are on whose shoulders I stand, not a word about Tyndale, he's not mentioned. Bill Mounce: I did not know that. Timothy George: And that's because of course he died as a condemned heretic, a martyr to the cause of biblical translation. So we stand on his shoulders, we're grateful for him, and for the KJV, and for all of the others who gave us the word of God in our own language. And it's a great blessing to be able to take the Bible and read it with some understanding and seek for deeper meanings. Timothy George: The work you're doing is so important, I think, for the church, for the Kingdom of God, for the advancement of the cause of Christ. So I commend you for it. Bill Mounce: Thanks, thanks. Timothy George: And I wish you every blessing. Thank you so much for coming to Beeson. This is your first visit I think. Bill Mounce: My first time. Never even been in Birmingham before. And having lived in Kentucky, it's really odd. I'd never gotten down here. But yeah, it's my first time here. It's a wonderful place. And you didn't ask me to do this, but I'll tell you, this is way up at my recommendation list. Timothy George: Thank you. Bill Mounce: It's the course loads, the student teacher ratio, the environment that you guys have created to really not just push data into kids' heads, but to form their life. It's really significant. And I'm not being paid to say that. Really, it's been my experience here, so thanks. Timothy George: Thank you so much for that good word. My guest today on the Beeson Podcast has been Dr. Bill Mounce. He is the founder and president of Biblical Training. He served on the Committee on Bible Translation for several major translations, the NIV, the ESV. A wonderful scholar, a wonderful Christian man. Thank you for this time today. Bill Mounce: My pleasure. Announcer: You've been listening to the Beeson Podcast, with host Timothy George. You can subscribe to the Beeson podcast at our website, beesondivinity.com. Beeson Divinity School is an interdenominational, evangelical divinity school, training men and women in the service of Jesus Christ. We pray that this podcast will aid and encourage your work, and we hope you will listen to each upcoming edition of the Beeson Podcast.