Lauren Mildahl is a recent graduate of Luther Seminary, where she earned an M.Div. At graduation, Lauren received the G.M. and Minnie Bruce Prize in New Testament, for her paper “‘Faithfully Accurate:’ An Analysis of the Updates to the Translation of James 2:1 in the NRSVue.”
Where did you grow up, what did you study as an undergraduate, and what led you to pursuing theological education?
I was born in Minnesota, but I grew up in Houston, Texas. I majored in English at Carleton College in Northfield, MN with a concentration in European Studies. After that, I received a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Pittsburgh. I worked as a middle school librarian for about 8 years before leaving that career to begin my studies at Luther. My faith has always been important to me but it wasn’t until my mom went to seminary in her retirement that I thought about going to seminary too. I have always loved church and have been writing sermons in my head in the pews for as long as I can remember. But it wasn’t until I had a chance to befriend some really wonderful female pastors that I really began to imagine that God might be calling me to be a pastor too.
What are you hoping to do with your Luther Seminary degree?
I’m honored and excited to have been called to serve as pastor of Saint Mark Lutheran in Circle Pines, Minnesota, which is in my home synod (Saint Paul Area). I’ll start just a few weeks after graduation. I might go back for more studies one day, if I ever decide what I love enough to devote all that time and effort to! In the meantime, I feel that God is calling me to parish ministry, and I’m really looking forward to serving the people of Saint Mark.
Tell us about the paper you submitted for the Bruce New Testament prize. What drew you to this topic?
I wrote about the differences in the translation of James 2:1 between the New Revised Standard Version (NRSV) and the Updated Edition (NRSVue). Some people might think you can’t write over 4,000 words about one verse, but you can! The NRSVue was published in 2021 and made about 12,000 substantive edits to the previous translation. James 2:1 in the NRSV reads: “My brothers and sisters, do you with your acts of favoritism really believe in our glorious Lord Jesus Christ?” whereas the NRSVue reads: “My brothers and sisters, do not claim the faith of our Lord Jesus Christ of glory while showing partiality.” That is a pretty substantial revision and it is, for sure, an outlier in the degree of difference between the NRSV and the NRSVue, which in itself is interesting. But as I dug into the choices that the NRSVue translators made, it was also interesting to see how those decisions impacted the theology and pastoral issues of the passage.
In a class I took with Matthew Skinner last fall—Romans to Revelation—I was assigned to translate some of the verses from James 2. During that assignment I noticed some of the differences in translation between the NRSV and the NRSVue and was interested enough to explore the topic more deeply and write this paper. Translation work has always fascinated me. I did a lot of work with ancient Greek in my undergrad degree and also took Reading Greek with Craig Koester at Luther, which made me very confident to approach the topic. My affinity for the languages of Koine Greek and English inspired me to think more deeply about these translation decisions and how they address various theologic, pastoral, and philologic issues.
How would you contextualize this piece of scholarship with your overall scholarly work here at Luther?
This was much more technical than most of the other scholarly work I have done at Luther and probably the most narrowly focused paper that I’ve written. I wrote it specifically for this occasion, although I drew a lot on my studies in many other classes. I also discussed the topic with Jennifer Pietz and am grateful for the encouragement she gave me to pursue the project. It was really fun for me to have a chance to explore a topic that hadn’t been assigned and just follow one of my particular interests: translation decisions. I also really enjoyed the fact that no one has really written about this topic before, or at least it hasn’t been published yet. Since the NRSVue is still such a new translation, there isn’t that much comparative scholarship yet. It felt like exploring new territory, and I enjoyed that!
What’s your favorite book or movie?
For a librarian, choosing a favorite book is like choosing a favorite hair on my head! But one that I absolutely loved was Cloud Cuckoo Land by Anthony Doerr, which felt like it was created in a lab to be appealing to me specifically. One throughline of the book is love for the ancient Greek language—so that is at least part of why I love it so much.