How do I test a Version of the Bible?

In these days when there are many versions of the Bible available in the large Christian Bookstore one needs a quick method to evaluate them.

If one is desiring a Version whose translation is based upon the principles of "One Canon with Two Testaments" and that Jesus Christ is the unifying Content of both Testaments, then the quickest way to check this out is to go to Psalms 1 & 2.

The Psalter was not only the Prayer Book of Judaism in the time of the Lord Jesus Christ, it was the Prayer Book of Jesus himself. And because it was His, it became the Prayer Book of the Early Church, prayed with Jesus Christ - that is interpreted and fulfilled through, in, by and with Him. Thus the original situation in which each Psalm was written mattered much less than its meaning and fulfilment in Jesus the Messiah.

Psalm 1 was seen as the Introduction to the whole Psalter and so was interpreted as prayers, prophecies and statement concerning Jesus Christ with whom and in whose name the Psalter was received in the Church (in her daily services, preaching and at the Eucharist). Thus the person referred to in Psalm 1 (in the Hebrew it is most certainly "the man", meaning "one male man") could not be any other than "the Man for God and for others", the Messiah of Israel, the Lord Jesus Christ.

To remove "the man" and replace the Lord Jesus Christ with "the one" is bad enough but to replace with "they" is to remove the Psalter from Christian prayer.

Psalm 2, following immediately after Psalm 1, is obviously Messianic, where the Messiah is called "the Anointed", "the King," "the Lord" and "the Son."

So it is that the Psalter begins with the Lord Jesus Christ in Psalms 1 & 2 and then every psalm is prayed "in Christ" or "through Christ" or "with Christ" or is "Christ praying through His Church." And the Christ is the whole Christ, the Incarnate One, the Messiah, the Crucified, Buried, Resurrected & Exalted Lord and Saviour.

I admit that such praying [which has fallen out of favour and of practice] seems to fly in the face of the modern approach to the exegesis and interpretation of the Bible, where the great search is for the original situation and the intended meaning of the original writer or user or both.

Where the modern approach totally dominates then the Psalter can be prayed only as prayers that can be used in different situations and moods. One psalm for this condition and another for that condition, with a few being used on festival days or on Good Friday.

If we are able to hold both ways of interpreting the Psalter together in the Church, then the prayers of the Church and of each member thereof are potentially the richer because of their union with Christ [and Christ in His Body] primarily and their union with the original faithful in Israel secondly.

Either way, we need to stay with literal translation or else we lose both possibilities and only have the narrow possibilities allowed by a feminist reading of the Psalter (which of course does to many other psalms what it does to Psalm 1!).

If the Version does not give you "Man" in Psalm 1, look for another! You will find that your choice is restricted and that in itself is a comment of modern Versions!

The Rev'd Dr. Peter Toon
Minister of Christ Church, Biddulph Moor,
England & Vice-President and Emissary-at-Large
of The Prayer Book Society of America