An article in World Magazine discusses Wycliffe‘s recent debate about how to translate “Son of God” and “God the Father” into Arabic for Muslim audiences, noting that “in Muslim contexts,” a literal translation “implies that God had sexual relations with Mary” — at least according to some translators. Therefore, Wycliffe’s translations have at times resorted…
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Though the text of the new Common English Bible (“CEB”) has been circulating for some time, its recent release made headlines (Bob Smietana in The Tennessean, picked up by Cathy Lynn Grossman on her USA Today blog), in part because of the translators’ decision to change the traditional “son of man” into “human one.” Why…
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Genesis 2:7, according to the KJV, has the creation of man “from the dust of the ground.” But why “dust”? The Hebrew here is afar, and it doesn’t seem to mean “dust.” From Genesis 2:7, we know that it’s something on the ground, but we don’t know what. “Dust” is a possibility, just from this…
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The debate between “formal equivalence” and “functional equivalence” has come up again at BBB, this time in the comment thread to a post about David Ker’s The Bible Wasn’t Written To You. (It’s a free e-book. Take a look.) Dannii started the debate with a reference to his post “In which I ask if there’s…
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Judge Not “Judge not…” Most people are familiar with this famous verse from Matthew 7:1 (and the similar Luke 6:37), and know that the full line runs along the lines of “Judge not, that you be not judged” (ESV). The content of the line is pretty easy to understand, but the poetry is very hard…
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Matthew 4:4 (also Luke 4:4) is among the most famous Bible quotations: “Man shall not live on bread alone” (NIV2011) or, better, “one does not live on bread alone.” But if not on bread, then what? What’s interesting is that there are two completely different answers.
I’m thrilled to announce the beta version of my latest project: Exploring the Bible videos. The site is a growing collection of short text-based videos about the Bible, frequently focusing on translation issues. The first three videos (also available on YouTube) are: John 3:16 – What does “God so loved the world” really mean? Quiz:…
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CNN’s belief blog has an interesting story about a request by PETA not to call animals “it” in Bible translations: PETA is hoping the [NIV’s] move toward greater gender inclusiveness will continue toward animals as well. “When the Bible moves toward inclusively in one area [human gender -JMH] … it wasn’t much of a stretch…
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Recent posts from my Ancient Wisdom, Modern Lives:
