In his
recent translation and commentary of Galatians, Craig Keener offered the
following translation of Gal 3:13:
Christ purchased our deliverance from the
above-mentioned curse of the law, by becoming a curse on your behalf. This is
because the Bible says, “Everyone
who was hanged on tree is cursed.” (Craig S. Keener, Galatians: A Commentary [Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2019],
253)
What is
rather interesting is that Keener translates the Greek phrase ὅτι γέγραπται as “the
Bible says,” notwithstanding this being an anachronistic term for the time of
Paul. We see something similar in the Book of Mormon where at a translation level,
Joseph Smith rendered as “Bible” a word Nephi used to describe the then-future
collection of books that we now know as the Bible (see 2 Nephi 29:3-4, 6, 10).
If a professional scholar such as Craig Keener can do it, so can Joseph Smith,
contra Richard Packham and other critics (see Allegedly
Anachronistic Greek Words in the Book of Mormon)
