For those who do not read scholarly works it may seem strange to feel bereaved when someone whom you have never actually met dies. I discovered via Levellers that Dr. Brevard S. Childs has passed away. He will be missed in Biblical scholarship, and though I never met him, I am deeply sorry that he…
I’ve been intending to mention this since last week’s Christian Blog Carnival came out, but I’ve been distracted. Mark Olson at Pseudo-Polymath has started a series on Genesis from a philosophical perspective. The first entry is Reflections on Gensis: Chapter 1, and he has now posted the second entry, Reflections on Genesis: Chapters 2-3 (part…
I located a post on Bible translations through the Methodist Blogs Weekly Roundup (for which I thank John the Methodist for his usual good job). The post is Ideology in Translations, but while I certainly believe ideology is involved in translations, I don’t see a battle of liberal vs conservative ideology here, and I also…
A few days ago Wayne Leman blogged about translating Hebrew poetry, and referred to an article by Philip C. Stine Biblical Poetry and Translation. The article is really excellent, and nothing I’m about to say here is intended to criticize that article as such. I’ve been very interested in translation of Hebrew poetry, but I…
One of the categories on which I rate trnslations for my Bible Version Selection Tool is on capitalization of divine names. This has resulted many times in people asking me if I’m not being a bit nitpicky in making an issue of something like that. Wayne Leman has posted about Psalm 2 and his arguments…
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…
Now that we’ve looked at various critical issues about this passage, and I’ve discussed the dangers and difficulties involved with Biblical criticism, I’d like to summarize some of the things we can learn by examining the passage critically. We have identified a number of elements in the passage that have been strung together to form…
Now that we’ve looked over the text and found a set of transitions in it, we can start looking at how critical methologies will apply to this material. Will they help us interpret and apply the passage? This is a moment to look at some of the reasons I’ve been writing this series. Frequently, Bible…
Form Criticism involves identifying smaller units in a composition that might have been transmitted separately, especially orally, prior to being included in the composition you are studying. There are quite a number of sections in our selection (Isaiah 24-27) that can be examined in this way. Since I am writing this series to help people…
Someone kindly e-mailed me a question about this Bible version, so I decided to take a look for myself. This is just a preliminary look, but you can find my notes at The Scriptures, and you can compare my results on this version with others using my Bible Translation Selection Tool. I would say that…
