In March, spirituality.com featured MARY TRAMMELL in a live chat titled "Translating the Bible: its message for your life." Dr. Trammell wrote her master's thesis and doctoral dissertation on the King James Version of the Bible. She also coauthored the book, The Reforming Power of the Scriptures: A Biography of the English Bible (Boston: The Christian Science Publishing Society, 1996) with William G. Dawley, Editor of the Sentinel. A teacher and practitioner of Christian Science, she's also a member of The Christian Science Board of Directors of The First Church of Christ, Scientist, and Editor in Chief of the Sentinel, The Christian Science Journal, and The Christian Science Monitor.

What follows are excerpts from the chat. To hear the replay or read a transcript, go to www.spirituality.com/chats/translatingbible.

Do you think it's better to spend more time studying just one Bible translation, or to move between different translations?

I can see advantages in both. I like to work with a variety of Bible translations, going from one to another.

I have a friend who has just finished a term as Second Reader in a Christian Science church, which means she read the Bible for the Sunday services. And she was saying to me that although the service itself was conducted from the King James Bible, as part of her preparation for reading on Sunday, one day she'd read it from one version of the Bible, an English translation; another day from another translation; another from another. And then several times from the King James.

It gave her a sweeping sense for what the meaning of each citation was. So I would go with the idea of not limiting yourself to just one translation of the Bible.

Do you have any information on how Mary Baker Eddy felt about different Bible translations?

A year or so ago, I had the opportunity to do some research on how Mary Baker Eddy felt about various translations of the Bible. I did that with The Mary Baker Eddy Library for the Betterment of Humanity here in Boston.

The documents show that she vastly preferred the King James Bible over any modern translation of her day. She used it predominantly in her works. She quoted from it. And one time when the editor of The Christian Science Journal, which she had founded, announced suddenly that he was going to be using another translation of the Bible, she wrote him and asked him to change his mind, to revert to the King James.

However, there are sure some notable exceptions to her general preference for and use of the King James Bible. One of the most prominent of them is right on the cover of all of her published works. And that's in the cross and the crown seal.

Around that seal, it says, "Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out demons." Now that is not in the King James Bible. You'll find that in the Revised Version of Mrs. Eddy's day. In the King James, it's all the same, except for the word demons, which is devils in the King James [see Matt. 10:8]. And of course, those are Jesus' words.

Maybe she didn't want to use the word devils on the cover of her magazines and written works; I don't know. But for whatever reason, this is one of those cases where she went another way.

It's also, I think, very interesting to know that she had some 40 Bibles that we know of in her personal Bible collection, and most of them were versions—historic and modern—other than the King James. And when you look in the margins of those Bibles, it is clear that she really studied them, especially some of those modern ones.

She combed through them and made notes in them, and day by day would work with them and open them up randomly and study them—as she did with her King James Bible. And again, she studied the King James most, but she studied other versions frequently.

What are your thoughts on word-for-word translations, as opposed to paraphrase translations?

They're probably both valuable. One of the interesting word-for-word translations in The Mother Church's collection, which is housed in The Mary Baker Eddy Library, is one translated in the 19th century by Julia Smith. She lived in New England, and she learned Greek and Hebrew—self-taught—so that she could translate the Bible. And since she didn't know all the syntax and grammar, she had to do it almost literally, word-for-word, and then try to sort it out. Well, it's not the best translation, probably, but it is the first complete Bible translated by a woman.

But there are many very fine word-for-word translations that are modern translations I think we could recommend. Then there are the paraphrase ones. We have Eugene H. Peterson's The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language [Colorado Springs, Colorado: NavPress, 2002], which is a very loose paraphrase, and it wanders pretty far from the basic literal Bible text. But it has reached many people, and gives one, certainly, a sense of the spirit of the Bible, if not the absolute letter.

Given how much more background information and research is available for more modern translations, does that mean they're more accurate or reliable than a translation done a hundred years ago?

Not necessarily. I want to say, with all of these answers, these are my own personal perspectives. I do work for the Church, but I'm not speaking for the Church here. I'm speaking as an individual student and lover of the Bible. But certainly, the information that has been brought to light even in the last century, from the Dead Sea Scrolls and other sources, has been most helpful and enlightening.

The translators of the King James Bible did not have some of these materials, and so I think it's important, for those of us who want to understand the Bible as fully as we can, to avail ourselves of as much of this historical context and original text discovery as we possibly can. It would be foolish not to do so.

[But this question] makes me think of some of the things that Mary Baker Eddy said about the Bible. For example, one of them in Science and Health was sort of a caveat about Biblical study. She said, "Acquaintance with the original texts, and willingness to give up human beliefs (established by hierarchies, and instigated sometimes by the worst passions of men), open the way for Christian Science to be understood, and make the Bible the chart of life, where the buoys and healing currents of Truth are pointed out" (p. 24).

Sometimes we have to get back to the spirit of the original texts, and be willing to give up some of the human beliefs, maybe even some of the historical material, and open the way for real truth, real inspiration, to come through to us.

If I could just read one other thing that I think might be relevant here. The First Tenet that Mrs. Eddy gives for Christian Scientists is, "As adherents of Truth, we take the inspired Word of the Bible as our sufficient guide to eternal Life" (ibid., p. 497). That implies that there might be some that's uninspired, and that there might be material about [our view of] the Bible, possibly, that's uninspired. Or less inspired than others.

And so, individually, we can sift through these things and determine what, for us, feels most inspired and illumines our sense of the Bible the most. CSS