The Husband of One Wife and the NRSV
I have been studying Titus for an upcoming sermon series that I will be delivering in November at our church. That is why the last two posts have been from Titus 1 and 1 Timothy 3 concerning the qualifications for elders. I have made it around to reading Titus from the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV). It reads:
…someone who is blameless, married only once, whose children are believers, not accused of debauchery and not rebellious. (Titus 1:6)
As I pointed out in the last post, I think the elder qualification is that a man is faithful to his wife. I do not think the qualification is that he has been only married once in his life, regardless of God’s allowances for remarriage. However, that is exactly how the NRSV sounds with the phrase, “married only once.” Sorry all of you NRSV lovers, but that is terrible. At least it has a marginal note, “husband of one wife.” The NRSV should have used that rather than “married only once.”
It is frustrating to not have a perfect translation (yes, I know this is not practically possible). For Titus, I wish I could put combine some of the ESV renderings with some of the HCSB renderings and I would have perfection.
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Your Thoughts
5 Comments so far5 Responses to “The Husband of One Wife and the NRSV”
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Ray McCalla
October 22, 2008 at 8:14 pm
This is probably a good example of how the NRSV does lots of tap dancing to avoid gender specificity, even when it was intended by the author.
Thanks for your work!
Ray
Joe
October 23, 2008 at 11:22 am
To stand alone in rendering this verse in this way, in spite of what other passages teach regarding marriage and re-marriage makes one wonder how it was justified.
Brent Kercheville
October 23, 2008 at 12:44 pm
You are right, Ray. Gender neutral may be the reason. But we can’t be so gender neutral that the text become blurred.
Harry T.
February 1, 2009 at 3:20 am
I think it would be nice to point out where scripture says a man MUST be married to be a deacon or pastor.
Southern Baptists, which I am one, are very picky when it comes to such things because they read into scripture that the Pastor or Deacon must be married, when all the passage does is say one cannot be a polygamist.
Joe
February 4, 2009 at 3:14 pm
I don’t see how being a “one woman man” can be anything other than being faithful to his wife.
Paul seems to use the similar term “one man woman” in the same way in 5:9 to describe a faithful wife.