Until January 31, you have another chance to win a free, singed copy of my And God Said. From the book’s blog: We’re giving away a free copy of And God Said: How Translations Conceal the Bible’s Original Meaning, signed by the author. For the best chances of winning, enter the sweepstakes via Twitter. You…
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Zondervan has a chart (reproduced immediately below at right) suggesting that effectively conveying both the form and meaning of the original Biblical documents is the best way to reflect the original reading experience. I disagree, and I think that Zondervan’s approach represents a common and fundamental misunderstanding about how form works. Form and Meaning For…
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The BBC News Magazine has an interesting, accurate, and balanced piece on the KJV out today, called “King James Bible: How it changed the way we speak.” Based largely on works by David Crystal (Begat: The King James Bible and the English Language) and Alister McGrath (In the Beginning: The Story of the King James…
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As the debate about public displays of the Ten Commandments heats up again (also via the AP), this time in Mountain City in Johnson County, Tennessee, I think it’s worth remembering that most people are fighting over an inaccurate translation of the Ten Commandments. In particular, the original Hebrew of the sixth commandment (fifth for…
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The Joseph narrative is brilliantly written in a way that few translations capture. One example comes when Joseph, having been thrown in jail, is asked to interpret the dreams of two of Pharaohs’ servants — the butler and the baker — who have also been imprisoned. First comes the butler, and Joseph has good news…
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Translators frequently have information at their disposal that doesn’t come directly from the text they are translating. Though it’s often tempting, it is nonetheless almost always a mistake to add the additional information into the translation. For example, if a mystery novel starts, “a man was walking by the beach,” the translator should not change…
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Adultery and Matthew 5:32 According to Matthew 5:32, divorcing a woman causes her to commit adultery. But Peter Kirk notices that the new NIV (“NIV 2011”) translation has a new take on the verse. Peter writes: One rather odd change I noticed, which some might attribute to political correctness: in Matthew 5:32 the “adulteress” (1984,…
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The popular Better Bibles Blog (“BBB”) has a new feature: Share, where you can leave questions about Bible translation and share links. From the announcement there: GIVE US A LINK! We would like to hear from you. The Internet is a big place with far too much interesting stuff for our small group of writers…
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The Pope’s latest comments about condoms have again brought up the Ten Commandments, and, in particular, “thou shalt not kill,” which Catholics and some others number as the fifth commandment, while Jews and most Protestants call it the sixth. Unfortunately, “kill” is a mistranslation of the original Hebrew, which does not say, “you shall not…
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