In my previous entry in this series I noted the difference between a gloss and a definition. To review: First, let me distinguish between a “gloss” and a “definition.” A “gloss” is a word or phrase proposed as a translation for a word in the source language. When a Greek student is taught that “pistis”…
[Gleaned from the Christian Carnival CLXI, which you should go check out.] Kenny Pearce has written an excellent post on Bible translations. I say “excellent” based on the obvious standard that he agrees with much of what I say! 🙂 He talks about a spectrum of translations using what he calls “a degree of literalness.”…
Several years ago I was in an online chat on religion, and one of the other members discovered that I read Hebrew. I actually forget how he accomplished it; that wasn’t the topic and I didn’t tell him. In any case, he said, “Wow! You read Hebrew!” I acknowledged that I do. “I’ve been wanting…
[This is the first in a short series on word studies, especially the type of study done using an English concordance keyed to the Biblical languages, such as Strong’s Concordance.] A few years back in the pre-blog days when most online discussions took place on various forums, someone proposed to me a new translation and…
I’ve been at this series on Isaiah 24-27 for some months now. It’s taken so long mostly because I’ve been working at it slowly as I have time, and not because my series is that in-depth. The thing that has struck me in studying the passages for this series is the richness of the material….
Via a link from Wayne Leman, I found this post from Greg Lamm’s blog STAYINGTHECOURSE. I think this is an exceptional idea to aid with serious study of a passage. It relates well to both the reading and sharing phases. Of course under sharing I would include sharing your paraphrase with others and even challenging…
Wayne Leman has an exceptional post on women and Bible translation. We talk a great deal about gender accurate (or I still like gender-inclusive) language, but it’s men that are doing most of the talking. That’s because there are more men than women involved in translation. I’m in full agreement with what Wayne says in…
Since I responsded to a post on principles of interpretation, and Bruce Alderman also weighed in on that topic, I’ve been keeping my eyes open for more interesting discussion. Today I found a couple of posts by way of a trackback to my threads blog, in which the author notes that he recommends my article…
Continuing my suggestions for maintaining Biblical languages skills, I want to discuss briefly the balance between fast reading and the more serious, detailed, grammatical study. Most students who make an effort to maintain their Biblical languages skill–and unfortunately small percentage in my experience–set out on each passage of scripture to study the text as though…
Bruce Alderman disagrees with some of the principles of interpretation from Trivium Pursuit, which I referenced earlier, and has started a series on the same topic. His first principle is: All this is a long way of introducing my first principle of biblical interpretation: “God, what are you trying to tell me through these scriptures?”…
