Insight on the News
Unpopular Bible
For about a hundred years now, the name Jesus has been appearing as “Iesu” in Protestant Bibles in Japan. Catholic Bibles used “Zezu” initially, changing to “Iezusu” in 1895. In an attempt to resolve this long-standing difference, five years ago JBS (Japan Bible Society) published what it calls the Common Bible or Interconfessional Translation. As a compromise, this version uses “Iesusu,” hoping thus to appeal to both groups and bring the two closer together. Has this worked?
According to Mainichi Shimbun, while JBS sells over a million Bibles a year, only 20,000 copies of the new translation have been sold. “The biggest obstacle concerned the pronunciation of Jesus,” says Mainichi Daily News. The unfamiliar rendering made the new version “extremely unpopular among both Catholics and Protestants.” Now JBS is working on a revised edition, to be published next year. It will go back to the Protestant “Iesu” for Jesus. So that Catholics are not completely passed over, it will include the Apocryphal books. Whether this new plan will work, only time will tell.
The apostle Paul admonished his fellow Christians: “Now I exhort you, brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ that you should all speak in agreement, and that there should not be divisions among you.” (1 Corinthians 1:10) If professing Christians in Japan, and perhaps elsewhere, are having so much difficulty in coming to an agreement on that “name,” what unity could they expect in other things? Thus they, like others, are fulfilling Paul’s prophetic statement that “in the last days” people would “not [be] open to any agreement.”—2 Timothy 3:1, 3.
‘Year of Quakes’
Calling 1983 “A Year of Earthquakes,” The New York Times asks: “Might these events, so widely separated in space but so close together in time, have been related?” Just since October, the following major earthquakes, reckoned on the Richter scale, have been reported:
Date Location Magnitude
Oct. 4 Chile 7.3
Oct. 7 United States 5.2
Oct. 28 United States 6.9
Oct. 30 Turkey 7.2
Nov. 6 China 6.0
Nov. 8 Belgium 5.0
Nov. 15 Hawaii 6.7
Dec. 22 Guinea 6.3
Jan. 1 Japan 7.5
While the article went into various explanations for the cause of this “rash of lethal earthquakes,” Bible students are familiar with Jesus Christ’s warning: “There will be . . . earthquakes in one place after another.” Although Jesus did not explain the cause of these earthquakes, he showed that they are definitely “related” because they are a feature of a global composite “sign” marking his invisible “presence” and “the conclusion of the system of things.”—Matthew 24:3, 7.
A Mormon Play
A play about three young Mormons in wartime Germany has aroused some controversy in the Mormon church, reports The New York Times. In the real-life drama, the youths were arrested by the Gestapo for producing and distributing anti-Nazi literature, one being executed and the others being sent to concentration camps.
But why the controversy? “In the Nazi era, the church authorities in Utah counseled German members to support the Third Reich, making the three boys’ opposition to Hitler a violation of policy, according to Douglas Tobler, a professor at [Brigham Young University],” says the report. Thus “the play raises anew the seeming conflict between two doctrines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” the report adds, “one requiring obedience to the ‘law of the land,’ the other teaching devotion to truth and freedom of choice.”
When before Governor Pilate, Jesus Christ stated clearly: “My kingdom is no part of this world.” (John 18:36) Thus, Christians are to remain neutral in political affairs of the nations. The apostle Paul urged Christians to “be in subjection to the superior authorities . . . on account of your conscience.” When the authorities require Christians to violate their Bible-based conscience, they must “obey God as ruler rather than men.”—Romans 13:1, 5; Acts 5:29.