{N}3,{/}16 {N}THE INSPIRATION OF SCRIPTURE{/}
"All Scripture is inspired by God..." This phrase may also be translated: "All inspired Scripture is useful for...." If we take some liberties with the text, it might be even more meaningful to translate it: "All Scripture is a bearer of the Spirit of God." Why? Because not only was the Bible written under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, but we must also add that biblical texts are the Word of God for us only to the degree that we read them under the guidance of the Spirit. 
The Bible is not first of all a prestigious literary work, but neither is it simply a religious text. This text is {C}useful for teaching, refuting error, for correcting{/}," only to the degree that we allow ourselves to be guided by the Spirit. The Eastern liturgy of St. John Chrisostomus says it eloquently: the Book of the Gospels is placed together with the bread and the wine on the offertory table and then brought to the altar with the same solemn ritual. The Liturgy of the Eucharist demonstrates that we should consider God's Word as a "sacrament" of God's presence, since the Liturgy of the Word and the Liturgy of the Eucharist are presented with equal dignity. The Spirit is invoked as much over the bread and the wine for them to become the Body and Blood of Christ, as over the Lectionary for it to become the bearer of the breath of God.
{N}INSPIRATION{/}
Sacred Scripture is as much the work of God as it is of the human author. The author may not even have been conscious that God was guiding him. He may simply have set out to write something useful, influenced as much by his own preoccupations as by the limitations of his culture. In the process, however God was coordinating or planning the composition of Scripture, including the complexity of later editing (cf. the note about the Canon of the sacred books in the Introduction to the Book of Ezra). 
God, who revealed himself in a thousand ways throughout history, willed that the Bible would have a special quality, not so much in its individual parts, but rather taken as a whole. In its totality, the Bible is identified with Christ as God's Word.
When we study the historical development of biblical writings, we become aware of problems that often make us wonder how one or other book was written and then even became recognized as the Word of God. Chance seems to have played an important role in the process leading to its acceptance into the canon of inspired books. Why was one book accepted instead of another? Was it necessary to include Obadiah, Esther, or the Letter of Jude? 
However, if we look at the process from God's perspective, blind chance had nothing to do with it. Rather, God's objective guided everything, even those events made up of unforeseen circumstances and involving many individuals. 
From the beginning, God willed the salvation that Christ would bring. He also willed to provide us with a written form of revelation whose full sense would gradually become apparent after the Spirit had been poured out upon the people of God. Therefore we can say that God planned that the Bible would come into existence as the instrument of the Spirit.
If we understand inspiration in this way, we can avoid an otherwise insoluble dilemma, which has confused many people. Namely, if all biblical words are inspired, isn't God responsible for all of the Bible's errors and weaknesses? 
Some people attempt to resolve this last problem by suggesting that inspiration guarantees the accuracy only of the Bible's religious message, but not any historical or scientific errors that might occur in the text. This reasoning is true only to a certain degree, as we see when we examine how the apostles used texts from earlier Scriptures. For them, every word could be significant. Look, for example, how Paul interpreted the collective word, "descendants," in Galatians 3:16 as referring to a specific descendant, Christ. Furthermore, if one argues that inspiration extends only to the religious meaning of a text, who is to say which part of the biblical message is "religious" and which not? Or even more basic, is it even correct to say that the Bible is a message?
We ought to maintain that the whole text is inspired, but not in the literal way that Muslims understand the inspiration of the Koran. For them the text, all the words and every word of the text, is directly inspired by God in Arabic, and only this Arabic text is inspired. It should never even be translated into any other language! In contrast, Christians treat the biblical text as a sign and instrument, like a "sacrament" of God speaking to us. As a result, the Spirit is never enslaved to the letter of the original text. God does not speak Hebrew, but He did reveal Himself to people who spoke Hebrew and Greek. From this we can draw two conclusions.
1. We do not have to worry about occasional errors and weaknesses of the biblical text when measured with the criteria of our modern culture. We recognize that the Bible is both a perfect and an imperfect instrument, which the Spirit chooses to use for our benefit. The Gospel message is capable of communicating itself and of producing fruit, even when it uses dubious cultural symbols and examples from a past age. This is the promise of John 16,12-13, namely, that the Spirit will still inspire later readers to change to a new way of life today through the instrumentality of the biblical text. 
2. The inspiration of the original scriptural text will carry over to its translations even when, as the proverb says, a translation always distorts to some degree the meaning of the original text.
{N}TRANSLATIONS OF THE BIBLE{/}
It is a fact that the great majority of believers know the Bible only through one of its many translations (no matter how much the Church (or churches) has encouraged them to read the Bible.) This was already true about the Jewish community at the time of Jesus when the estimated Jewish population was about 8% of the Roman Empire, or six million people. Of these, no more than a half a million lived in Palestine. The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures (the Septuagint) was without question the version most commonly used .by Jews. It was found even in Palestine, the heart of Judaism, where Hebrew was the official language. The writers of the New Testament, when quoting Scripture used the Greek Septuagint. 
The Apostles and the primitive Christian communities only knew God's Word through the Septuagint translation, which was usually quoted in the New Testament. That version was very accurate for the Pentateuch, but was much less reliable for the rest of the books and even seems to drift away from the true sense of the prophets. Does this mean that the Early Church, which relied on this translation, never had access to this essential part of God's Word, namely the Old Testament? In chapter 15 of Acts is found a very interesting case relevant to this question. The Apostle James bases his teaching on a text from Amos (15,17) in its Septuagint Greek translation. That Greek, however, differs greatly from the original Hebrew text. This demonstrates that many members of the Primitive Church considered the Septuagint version to be just as inspired as the Hebrew text.
At the end of the third century, the Roman Church adapted itself to the changing dominant culture of the Empire and switched its official language from Greek to Latin. Another century later, the great scholar Saint Jerome completed the Vulgate translation of the Bible into Latin, which became the official Bible of the Catholic Church until the middle of the twentieth century! Jerome, like Origen before him, considered the Hebrew versions of Scripture to be more exact than the Greek, so he based the Vulgate on Hebrew manuscripts. Despite the many qualities of his version called the Vulgate, we must recognize today that it contains many errors. Even so, it is a fact that the Vulgate served as the dominant source for preaching, teaching, scholarship, and spirituality within the Catholic Church for all those centuries.
How easily we ignore this historical, transient reality of translations when discussing the inspiration of biblical texts. When all is said and done, the people of God depend upon existing translations, however accurate or inaccurate they might be, as their source for the Word of God. And don't we simply have to admit that the Spirit, who inspired the original text, continues to act with total liberty through whichever translations are available? 
{N}PRECISE TRANSLATIONS AND PASTORAL VERSIONS{/}
What we have just said about the early Greek and Latin versions is also valid for modern versions. Any translator has to keep at least three objectives in mind: To remain faithful to the original text, to express its message accurately in the new target language, and to accommodate the final vocabulary and style to a specific audience within that linguistic group. For example, if he prepares a scholarly version for students familiar with ancient languages and history, he will deliberately choose precise, technical words similar to the original Hebrew. He might also legitimately distort the accustomed literary style of the target language so that it reflects more closely the sentence structure and style of the original source language. For example, the scholarly translator might simulate Saint Paul's practice of writing a single sentence containing over ten lines. These are the guidelines a translator uses to remain faithful to the original text, to his target audience, and to his literary or scientific purpose. 
Someone making a modern popular translation intended for the less scholarly majority of readers will follow the same rules, but express the message in a very different way. For him, the principal question isn't what was the original structure of the text, but rather, how do the readers of my translation think and talk? In doing so, the translator follows in the footsteps of most of the original authors who wrote in the language of the common and mostly illiterate population. Similarly, one acceptable modern method is to provide a "dynamic equivalent" translation of the original. While respecting the literal meaning each word, the translator expresses the message of a sentence as simply and directly as possible as a whole. If one word expresses the idea better, he might eliminate three words of the original. The entire message, not the individual words, is his starting point, and communicating that message in a way understandable to his contemporary audience is his objective. That is good dynamic equivalent translating.
This whole question of inspiration and translation should be considered in the perspective of the Pentecost event and the coming of the Spirit. The Church's priority is not to form specialists, but rather to proclaim God's Word to the simple people of society, each in their own language.

