Holy: Understanding it Better Through Textual Studies

I want to begin with an examle from what is today called textual criticism.There are four books that are critical for examining the underlying New Testament Greek text.  They are:

1)  The Greek New Testament, published by the United Bible Societies
2)  A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, written by Bruce M. Metzger
3)  The Text of the New Testament, written by Kurt and Barbara Aland.
4)  The Identity of the New Testament Text, written by William Pickering

The final one is a controversial addition, because it disagrees on the level of principles with with first three.  I've added it, because I believe in fairness toward competing views.  The more important issue though is a practice that is common to textual criticism that is unfortunately lacking in biblical translation. I read this recently in Bible Translation and the Spread of the Church: " ... the United Bible Society attempts to help translators by providing a graded evaluation for textual variants that are cited"(p. 42).   I would like today to provide grade for he translation of the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek words behind the English translation of "holy".

First, I have to add one further point from the book that I mention in the previous paragraph about textual critics providing options with grades:  "Kurt Aland writes that this feature [a graded evaluation for textual variants; was `insisted upon by Eugene A. Nida against the whole editorial committee, if I may speak out of school, and in retrospect I believe he was right'" (p. 42).  I too believe he was right and that the principle can carry over to translation.  When there are variants or variations in how a word is translated, why not grade them as a group rather than insist on one option alone without grade A evidence? 

Here is what I insist that we need to do in translating holy - we need to show the variations in how "holy" in the original is translated rather than present the evidence as though there is only one option, when we are speaking of more than one possibility.  Based on my reading, here is what the committee of scholars would like assign for grades for the different possible translations of the original text whether in Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek. 

There grades for a committee of scholars (if they know the evidence well):

"set apart"  B+
"pure" B-
"whole C-

This I think would be the graded evaluation for translation variants.  I want to point out that these are not my personal grades on these variants.  Notice that I do not think that the best scholars on this topic assign an A grade for any of these definitions.  I draw this primarily from the most prominent theologians on the topic in the 20th Century: Rudoph Otto "wholly other", Norman Snaith "set apart" and Klein "probable" for "set apart". 

The difficulty for the last entry of "whole" and the reason it receives only a C- is that while the English word for "holy" has a root meaning in English of whole, this only proves what the early English translators and some of its earlier readers thought the Hebrew meant "whole" according to their English translation efforts.  That is significant, but it is not the final conclusion in the discussion.  The English word "holy" cannot be used to prove what the Hebrew, Aramaic or Greek means.  It is a translation and not the original.  We have to retrace the evidence for "holy" as a valid translation.  For myself, if qadosh in Hebrew or hagios in Greek does not mean whole, then I think holy might be better replaced for the sake of meaningfulness and clarity, consistently by the English words "set apart" or "pure".  It makes little sense for the sake of meaningfulness to have to always explain what holy means.  Holy has historical value, but does it have contemporary value in that case? 

The other problem for the meaning of "whole" is that the scholarship of that earlier era going back to at least Tyndale in the history of English transaltion, it does not leave us clear footnotes to trace where the idea of "whole" comes from.  We know know what they thought (their conlusions), but we are going to have a hard time knowing why and from what source (their support).   

So moving forward from here, it is not only ancient copiers of the text that preseved marginal readings, so do contemporary textual scholars.  The old copyists graded their options according ot in the text (higher grade) and in the margin of the text (lower grade).  We need to do the same with those words that are translated in most English translations by "holy", "sanctified", or "hallowed".  We need to presently grade the different meanings openly for the readers.  Give people the graded options they deserve, ratther than one option that suggests a higher certainty than there is in reality. 
Reality is refreshing.  Anything less is draining.

In Christ,

Jon