His life gave The Word assiduous flesh and blood meaning.
If you like arguments, even those that sometimes devolve into fisticuffs, I suppose one could go to a sports bar in Boston and say something like, "How 'bout them Eagles"? Similarly, once upon a time, one could enter a saloon in Manila near Clark Air Force Base and begin to sing the Marine Corps Hymn. Or, if you really fancy a donnybrook, enter a room full of ecumenical Christian clergy and simply say "Bruce Metzger". If you do so, and are looking for me to have your back, I'll be hiding under a table.
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1914, Bruce Metzger displayed the qualities of his era as he was polite, professional, ever a gentleman, helpful, hyper-competent in his chosen field, and would always wave at students at Princeton Theological Seminary as he left the parking lot. That could be a little daunting, as I discovered in the early days of my resident fellowship there. He'd be so busy making sure that he waved that his car would sometimes take an errant path. As a Presbyterian colleague noted when he pulled me away from the front grill of that mid-sized Japanese-marque car, "Careful, man. You almost got Metzgered."
His driving skills weren't what made him controversial, however. It was because, from the mid-20th century to our current day, no one has did more to inform our understanding of holy scripture than Metzger. It is in the translations that he oversaw, the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version, that we have heard and read in worship during the bulk of my lifetime. Many of us, especially scholars trained to plumb ever deeper understanding from the fixed canon of scripture, appreciate his devotion and accomplishments. Others, whose faith depends not on interpretation and lyricism, but on the hardness of unshakable authority reinforced by an unchanging regard for a spiritual document, think him more or less the spawn of Satan.
Welcome to my world, folks. If you're looking for Christian love and charity, allow me to chortle.
Earlier in my clergy career I had attended what was the flagship seminary of the Episcopal Church. While there, earning a Master of Divinity degree, I was acquainted with a professor who had never left the seminary. He had earned all of his degrees there and had held a tenured teaching position for almost three decades. He had never served as a rector, chaired a vestry meeting, or dealt with an obstreperous altar guild. He simply taught his courses, occasionally published some prosaic bit of minor academic work, and generally behaved in an entitled, condescending, and sarcastic manner to those of us who had invaded his private domain.
So, over a decade later, now working on my doctorate at PTS, I felt some trepidation when being introduced to Metzger and discovering that he, too, had never left the confines of his seminary. He had arrived there in 1935 as a callow youth from a small college in Pennsylvania and had earned all of his subsequent degrees on that pleasant campus. The fact that he had married the seminary dean's daughter around the same time he was made a professor tended to reinforce my budding prejudice.
However, instead of some sour, contemptuous and self-satisfied niche scholar, I discovered an example of a vanishing species of Protestant teacher: The kind, gentlemanly, genuine person of faith. Even better, one who was actually interested in my subject area and thesis. Presbyterians 1, Episcopalians 0.
By the 1950's, Metzger had become the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and was elected or otherwise named chairman or president of a variety of societies and organizations important to the study and translation of scripture. In addition, he carried a variety of honorary degrees from institutions around the world.
While he would annually publish books in his field, including a few that are still indispensable in understanding how sacred literature is translated, it is his work as a contributor to the National Council of Churches' Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible that would have the most pervasive influence. As stated in its preface, the RSV translation would "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries [and] put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition." So important and mainstream was this new translation that one of the original editions was presented to then-President Harry Truman.
While it was recognized as the most accurate translation to date, as language is a living thing, it still was in need of some improvement, especially given increasing knowledge of Biblical languages permitted through continued archaeological research. By the 1980's, the translation of what would be known as the New Revised Standard Version would be organized, this time with Metzger as the chairman of its Committee on Translators. Since its release, the NRSV has become the standard text in use by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, and is officially approved by the Catholic Church. It is listed in the Canons of The Episcopal Church [of the United States] as its primary translation.
Consider the difference between these translations of Acts 10:34-35. The first, from the King James Version:
By the mid-1990's, after he had retired from the NRSV committee and from his professorship, he still kept office hours and worked on subsequent books about the challenge and need of scrupulous accuracy and lyrical sensitivity in scriptural translation. One day I, and a collection of my colleagues, stopped by to introduce ourselves, I suppose as fellow scholars, but I think mostly to have a moment with the one, true "rock star" of Biblical studies.
While in light conversation with him, I noticed a cremation urn, a cenotaph, sitting on a bookshelf in the office. While I was curious, imagining it perhaps to be the remains of his favorite pet or some such, one of my bolder colleagues did something I would have never thought to do: He asked him about it.
"That was originally a Bible in the Revised Standard Version. A Baptist preacher somewhere in the South took umbrage at anything that would assume to replace the King James Version so he lit it on fire at a church service. Can you imagine burning a Bible, any Bible, at a service? Anyway, he sent the ashes to me in the urn. It's a good reminder of how important particular translations can be to Christians."
Yes, that's one thing of which it was a reminder.
Bruce Metzger would, in the King James' formulation, cease to be mortal in his 93rd year, still recognized as the most influential scholar of the Holy Bible of the 20th and, thus far, 21st centuries. I am told the cenotaph, for those curious, continues to passed like a torch to subsequent translators of scripture.
Born in a small town in Pennsylvania in 1914, Bruce Metzger displayed the qualities of his era as he was polite, professional, ever a gentleman, helpful, hyper-competent in his chosen field, and would always wave at students at Princeton Theological Seminary as he left the parking lot. That could be a little daunting, as I discovered in the early days of my resident fellowship there. He'd be so busy making sure that he waved that his car would sometimes take an errant path. As a Presbyterian colleague noted when he pulled me away from the front grill of that mid-sized Japanese-marque car, "Careful, man. You almost got Metzgered."
His driving skills weren't what made him controversial, however. It was because, from the mid-20th century to our current day, no one has did more to inform our understanding of holy scripture than Metzger. It is in the translations that he oversaw, the Revised Standard Version and the New Revised Standard Version, that we have heard and read in worship during the bulk of my lifetime. Many of us, especially scholars trained to plumb ever deeper understanding from the fixed canon of scripture, appreciate his devotion and accomplishments. Others, whose faith depends not on interpretation and lyricism, but on the hardness of unshakable authority reinforced by an unchanging regard for a spiritual document, think him more or less the spawn of Satan.
Welcome to my world, folks. If you're looking for Christian love and charity, allow me to chortle.
Earlier in my clergy career I had attended what was the flagship seminary of the Episcopal Church. While there, earning a Master of Divinity degree, I was acquainted with a professor who had never left the seminary. He had earned all of his degrees there and had held a tenured teaching position for almost three decades. He had never served as a rector, chaired a vestry meeting, or dealt with an obstreperous altar guild. He simply taught his courses, occasionally published some prosaic bit of minor academic work, and generally behaved in an entitled, condescending, and sarcastic manner to those of us who had invaded his private domain.
So, over a decade later, now working on my doctorate at PTS, I felt some trepidation when being introduced to Metzger and discovering that he, too, had never left the confines of his seminary. He had arrived there in 1935 as a callow youth from a small college in Pennsylvania and had earned all of his subsequent degrees on that pleasant campus. The fact that he had married the seminary dean's daughter around the same time he was made a professor tended to reinforce my budding prejudice.
However, instead of some sour, contemptuous and self-satisfied niche scholar, I discovered an example of a vanishing species of Protestant teacher: The kind, gentlemanly, genuine person of faith. Even better, one who was actually interested in my subject area and thesis. Presbyterians 1, Episcopalians 0.
By the 1950's, Metzger had become the George L. Collord Professor of New Testament Language and Literature at Princeton Theological Seminary and was elected or otherwise named chairman or president of a variety of societies and organizations important to the study and translation of scripture. In addition, he carried a variety of honorary degrees from institutions around the world.
While he would annually publish books in his field, including a few that are still indispensable in understanding how sacred literature is translated, it is his work as a contributor to the National Council of Churches' Revised Standard Version of The Holy Bible that would have the most pervasive influence. As stated in its preface, the RSV translation would "preserve all that is best in the English Bible as it has been known and used through the centuries [and] put the message of the Bible in simple, enduring words that are worthy to stand in the great Tyndale-King James tradition." So important and mainstream was this new translation that one of the original editions was presented to then-President Harry Truman.
While it was recognized as the most accurate translation to date, as language is a living thing, it still was in need of some improvement, especially given increasing knowledge of Biblical languages permitted through continued archaeological research. By the 1980's, the translation of what would be known as the New Revised Standard Version would be organized, this time with Metzger as the chairman of its Committee on Translators. Since its release, the NRSV has become the standard text in use by the United Methodist Church, the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), the Presbyterian Church (USA), the United Church of Christ, the Reformed Church in America, the United Church of Canada, and is officially approved by the Catholic Church. It is listed in the Canons of The Episcopal Church [of the United States] as its primary translation.
Consider the difference between these translations of Acts 10:34-35. The first, from the King James Version:
Then Peter opened his mouth, and said, Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons. But in every nation he that feareth him, and worketh righteousness, is accepted with him.Now the NRSV:
Then Peter began to speak to them: “I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him.The message in the latter is not only clearer but, in its more accurate form, a stirring reminder of what made Christianity particular. It is no small wonder that the passage is annually offered on Easter morning.
By the mid-1990's, after he had retired from the NRSV committee and from his professorship, he still kept office hours and worked on subsequent books about the challenge and need of scrupulous accuracy and lyrical sensitivity in scriptural translation. One day I, and a collection of my colleagues, stopped by to introduce ourselves, I suppose as fellow scholars, but I think mostly to have a moment with the one, true "rock star" of Biblical studies.
While in light conversation with him, I noticed a cremation urn, a cenotaph, sitting on a bookshelf in the office. While I was curious, imagining it perhaps to be the remains of his favorite pet or some such, one of my bolder colleagues did something I would have never thought to do: He asked him about it.
"That was originally a Bible in the Revised Standard Version. A Baptist preacher somewhere in the South took umbrage at anything that would assume to replace the King James Version so he lit it on fire at a church service. Can you imagine burning a Bible, any Bible, at a service? Anyway, he sent the ashes to me in the urn. It's a good reminder of how important particular translations can be to Christians."
Yes, that's one thing of which it was a reminder.
Bruce Metzger would, in the King James' formulation, cease to be mortal in his 93rd year, still recognized as the most influential scholar of the Holy Bible of the 20th and, thus far, 21st centuries. I am told the cenotaph, for those curious, continues to passed like a torch to subsequent translators of scripture.
