In an article titled Raising Beast People, subtitled “Science is blurring the line between humans and animals, Lee Silver has pointed to some of the aspects of science that raise our greatest fears. All of the science fiction stories of humans turning into monsters, all the stories of alien interventions, and all of our nightmares…
Peter Kirk has writtten that he finds a complementarian bias in the TNIV. He says: A major aim of the changes made in Today’s New International Version (TNIV) was to avoid the danger of such misunderstandings. I don’t think anyone can complain about TNIV’s rendering of 2 Thessalonians 3:10: “Anyone who is unwilling to work…
A friend recently e-mailed with the following request: Tell me why you like the REB. First let me qualify what I mean by liking a translation. There are many factors that go into making a translation suitable for a particular purpose or person. Without knowing that context, it’s impossible to give a meaningful answer to…
A frequent criticism of The Message or The Living Bible is that they are not really translations, but rather paraphrases, and thus should not be regarded as Bibles. Often “translation” is contrasted to “paraphrase” almost as though the two are antonyms. Others draw the boundaries in a much narrower way, calling translations like the Good…
I am frequently asked to compare various translations. Generally my questioner wants me to declare one translation correct, and the other incorrect, or at least to state that one rendering is better than the other. Translators know that this is frequently difficult to do, because there is no one-to-one relationship between source language and target…
And YHWH spoke to the fish, and it spit Jonah up on dry land. Then YHWH’s word came to Jonah a second time, saying, “Get up! Go to Nineveh! . . . ” — Jonah 2:11-3:2a I knew a man who almost got a law degree, but dropped out during the last year of law…
Over on Locusts and Honey, John has a post On the Dangers of Being a Professional Wiseman, that I think should be read by everyone involved in pastoring, spiritual formation, professional counselling, or even just prayer ministry. The temptation to believe that because one has certain professional training, experience, ordination, licensure, or any one of…
I’ve just located a wonderful series of blog entries on Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible online through my own complete laziness and the hard work of someone else! (Hat Tip: Suzanne McCarthy at Better Bibles Blog in her entry Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible. Suzanne’s entry is worthwhile itself for its list of…
One frequent accusation I hear because I prefer modern translations over the KJV for most purposes is that I hate the KJV. Presumably, the people who say such things think that they honor the KJV by means of their doctrine. Nothing could be further from the truth. I believe that the KJV was probably the…
I found an outline and notes for 1 Corinthinas 12-14 that I wrote back in 2001. Now I have also been working with Gordon Fee’s commentary on 1 Corinthians, and he uses an outline based on the questions that Paul received in the letter to him from the Corinthians. I think his is a valid…