What Billy Graham said.... (exercise in Hebrew)

I think Billy is mistaken. I don't see it in the original.

David,

Great question! I think the first thing I would do doesn't involve using the original languages at all. I'd use Logos to compare the major English translations to see if any translation brings this out:

Under Tools, select Text Comparison.

Enter Psalm 53:1 in the reference box and select "English Bibles" in the Bible section.

It might be hard to see in the picture, but if you run it yourself, you'll notice that no English translation says "there is no God for me." That immediately makes me suspect. I would expect that if it was a significant point, hopefully some group of translators in the past 500 years would have captured it.

But while that makes me highly suspicious, it doesn't prove the case. Without any Hebrew, it's hard to tell you how to check this in general, but I can show you how to check this instance. 

Logos has what are called "Reverse Interlinears." On a number of your Bibles (ESV, RSV, NLT, NRSV, KJV). There's a tab that says "Interlinear" at the top:

If you click this, it will display a number of additional lines of text, showing you the underlying Hebrew (or Greek or Aramaic) of the text. Now we can click on the english word in the text we're interested in, and it will highlight the Hebrew below. So click, "God" in vs. 1:

 You'll see that in the interlinear pane, the information is highlighted. At the very bottom there is a "Morph" section, which stands for morphology, or how the word is parsed (is it a noun, verb, etc. etc.) You can hover over that list of letters and get an explanation:

In Hebrew, we would expect that if "for me" were in the text, it would either be included in a preposition, or attached directly to the word as a suffix. If it were a suffix, that "noun, proper, divine, singular, masuline, normal" would also say, "suffixed" as in Psalm 22:1.

 In this case, there is neither a suffix or preposition (if there were a preposition, it would mean that the translators had left it untranslated, which would mean you would see a column that had information in the MSS, Lemma, and Morph lines, but nothing in the surface line, indicating that it was untranslated, like Psalm 27:2, just to the right of "foes":

Another excellent thing to do would be to run a "Passage Guide" and "Exegetical Guide" on the passage and study the information there, especially good commentaries and see if any of them discuss the translation in question. And if you are interested in learning more, there are a number of grammars and tools that you can use to start learning Greek and Hebrew for yourself!

So, my conclusion would be that Billy Graham was wrong, at least from a translation standpoint. In his commentary on the Psalms, VanGemeren (Expositors Bible Commentary) says that this denial is not denying that he exists, but that he disregards God and assumes he isn't held accountable to God (EBC, Psalm 14:1).

So perhaps what Billy was trying to say is that the point of Ps 53:1 isn't that the fool disbelieves in the existence of God, but that he rejects the authority of God in his life, thus "there is no God for me." But that's an issue of interpretation, not of translation.

Terry Poperszky said:

David, I am impressed with your use of the Logos Tools to deal with the question

Me too!  Thanks David.

Matt

I'm glad you guys found it helpful! Thanks for the encouragement [:)]

Jerry,

I live in south Florida.

That was very informative, I wish we had more examples .....[;)]

brian said:

foolish is to discern
fool is to condemn. 

An interesting older thread.

You assume modern semantics .... fool vs foolish one being different 3,000 years ago. But in the 1800s, several NT translators agreed with 'foolish' as a better choice, retaining 'fool' in the OT.

The Billy G question is also interesting. There's been several monographs that suggest early semitics didn't speak to 'no diety', but rather refusing a specific diety (and therefore a personal one). Ergo Billy G's point.

It looks like an explanation but really it is an excuse.

The senseless has said. The foolish has said.

I write contracts for a living.  A misplaced idle word can cost a lot of money. Even a misplace comma. That is why my contracts are proof read by someone better at grammar than me.

I read Koine Greek and I speak modern Greek. 

They be translated wrong!

The Septuagint used an adjective as well. It used Afron. Jesus said we should not say mwre. The word he used was a noun in the imperative. He later used that word plural as an adjective.

You cannot claim that the many who got their English grammar wrong compared to those who didn't that is is about the art of translation. NO! They flat out changed the scriptures!

We will find out for sure on judgement day. 

As to "I am preaching"