BIBLE : ORIGINAL MEANING?

Church was nice… as nice as an Anglican communion service could have been. There was the communion (duh!), the offertory, the offering, the peace, the Nicene Creed, the intercession, and the benediction. “Take just one thing from service today”, I usually tell myself. Unlike most past services, I actually took home one (maybe two) thing(s). This time, I was truly in awe to be in church.

The sermon by the curate was tagged The Poor in Our Midst. His explanation of the theme was not one I fully agreed with but that has to be a discussion for another day. I was truly taken aback by the Bible verses he was quoting. No, he wasn’t wrong and he was humble enough to receive help from the choir when he found himself in between the sandwich. My grievance surfaced when, after speaking good, correct English (Nigerian English even), he turned back the hands of time to speak “Bible English” when quoting the bible verses. He was like, “we are comfortable for a reason, abi? We cannot claim God gave us riches and not cater for his creation, not love them. The rich man suffered the consequences, went to hell, and accepted his fate but he now begged Abraham to send Lazarus back to his brothers to warn them. The bible says, ‘I beg thee therefore, father, that thou shall send him to thy father’s house, for I have five brethren, that he may testify to them, lest they also cometh to this place of torment.’” What just happened? I asked myself in church. The curate wants us to understand his explanation of the story but not the story itself? I looked around me for support. Nobody seemed to give a flying rat tail what I thought. They were listening to the sermon. I gently tapped the lady beside me (we are both ushers, hence the famzing), asked her if she knew what just happened. She looked at me as if I was suffering from an incurable face disorder.

The sermon was over…for me. For the next ten minutes, I was asking myself the same question over and over again. Why? Why? Why? Our vocabulary of English has been updated in all aspects of our lives, except the church? We don’t greet each other, “how art thou”, do we?

And this situation is not peculiar to only my church. Most churches I’ve been to claim the King James Version as their bible. Both the priests and the congregation speak thou, thee, lest, hast, thy and the lot. After a little investigation where I asked why the bibles with the simpler understandable English language were not used, I was told the King James Version of the bible is the most accurate version of the happenings in the bible. I was also told that the new bibles with simpler English had ‘diluted’ the message and they might even be the scheme of the devil for the children of God not to get the ‘real’ message behind the words. I’m no child of the devil, but I think that’s a bit shallow (no offence intended). First, nobody in the bible spoke English, as far as history is concerned. So for their records to be brought to us, it must be translated. Those of us who understand more than one language know that no sentence in one can literally be translated into another language word by word. That brings the subject of dilution back into contention. Any statement figuratively translated is diluted. It has lost the essence, the meaning behind the reason it was made in the first place. In my opinion, the King James Version of the bible is already diluted as it is. It was translated. Thus, the argument retaining the message behind the words is defeated. Second, the King James Version was written at a time when English was spoken that way. If the bible was written (translated) in our time, it would surely not contain thou, thy, and lest, but if our bible was still used five centuries later, what message are we preserving when the language would already be difficult to comprehend. Got my drift?    

Children are expected to read the bible, know it by heart. In their naivety, they cram so many verses without even understanding the tiniest bit of what is being said in church. Let me narrate my testimony (sort of). I know some part of the bible by heart - I know their essence, their reasons. I learnt them when I was like ten. Reinhard Bonnke came to Ibadan and during his crusades; he distributed some ‘easy-to-read’ bibles to his crowds. I got hold of one of these bibles and was relieved to find a bible with English like the one in my textbooks from school. The relief turned to motivation (coupled with the fact that I get easily bored), I picked it up and started reading, more as a storybook with different stories than as a spiritual connotation. I enjoyed it. I learnt a lot. And most importantly, I understood what I was reading. I have those stories in my heads then, now and forever. They can only be modified by messages and my experiences. All I did was to read an easy-to-read bible.

This obstinacy with the past just sounds like sticking with the typewriter in today’s computer world. I was shocked once when a woman (woman, not lady) told me that using blender destroys the taste of the sauce that is preserved by the grinding stone. We don’t wear robes anymore for a reason. The monochrome television is not produced anymore for a reason. Whatever that reason is, it is enough for us to start understanding what we read in the Holy Bible and not wait for the curate to explain everything he quotes during every other communion service.