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Andy Rau
March 2, 2011

The New American Bible gets an update

Earlier this year, we reflected on the ever-changing nature of language, and the challenge this poses to Bible translators. Over the years, words fall out of use or assume different meanings, making even the most solid Bible translations more difficult to read.

In the news today is the New American Bible, which is getting a new translation next week for exactly this reason.

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has ordered up a new translation of the Bible, one it says is more accurate, more accessible and more poetic.

Now “booty,” a word that sets off snickers in Sunday school, will be replaced by the “spoils” of war when the newest edition of the New American Bible, the English-language Catholic Bible, comes out on Ash Wednesday, March 9.

The article lists several examples of words and phrases that are being changed because of connotations they’ve acquired since the NAB was first translated—for instance, the historically-charged word “holocaust” is being replaced by “burnt offering.”

March 1, 2011

Blue is blue is blue, right?

In Numbers 15:38, God commands the Israelites to dye a cord of their tzitzit (tassels) blue: “Speak to the Israelites and say to them: ‘Throughout the generations to come you are to make tassels on the corners of your garments, with a blue cord on each tassel.'”

English Bible translations typically translate the Hebrew word tekhelet as “blue.” But recent scholarship—as reported by the New York Times—is bringing attention to the extreme complexity and difficulty of producing the color tekhelet:

[Dr. Koren] found that the dye used in the Masada sample, a piece of bluish-purple yarn embroidery, came from a breed of Murex trunculus snail familiar to modern Israelis. Such shades on textiles are rare finds since they were typically worn exclusively by royalty or nobility.

Determining what exactly tekhelet would have looked like in its day has been the subject of conjecture and curiosity among rabbis, religious commentators and scientists for centuries; it is considered the most important of the three ritual colors cited in the Bible. The other two are argaman, a reddish purple, and shani, known as scarlet.

“It’s especially exciting for religious Jews who place great importance on this color,” said Daniella E. Bar-Yosef Mayer, a University of Haifa archaeologist specializing in mollusk shells.

Some time after the Jews were exiled from Israel in A.D. 70, the knowledge of how to produce the tekhelet dye was lost. The dye was also prohibitively expensive to make: hundreds of snails were used to make even a small batch, and some in ancient times claimed it was worth 20 times its weight in gold.

“Blue” may be the most straightforward English translation of the term, but as is often the case in translating Hebrew, nuances are lost:

“Tekhelet is the color of the sky,” Dr. Koren said in his laboratory. “It’s not the color of the sky as we know it; it’s the color of sky at midnight.” He paused and added, “It’s when you are all alone at night that you reach out to God, and that is what tekhelet reminds you of.”

Read the entire article at the NYT.

Andy Rau
February 28, 2011

The Gospel Coalition 2011 National Conference: carrying out the Great Commission in changing times

Looking for an opportunity to connect with other Christians who are passionate about carrying out the Great Commission in a world of rapidly-changing technology and social trends? Our friends at The Gospel Coalition are hosting their Gospel Coalition 2011 National Conference in Chicago this April 12-14, and there’s a huge amount packed into its three days. More than 60 teachers—including Don Carson, Tim Keller, Matt Chandler, John Piper, and others—will lead workshops about diverse topics like business leadership, inner-city church planting, counseling, and sharing the gospel with Muslims. The conference website has a full speaker list and workshop schedule.

As an added incentive to attend, The Gospel Coalition (in partnership with Zondervan) will give away a premium copy of the NIV Thinline Reference Bible (ebony leather edition—a $129.99 retail value) to 35 conference registrants. It’s a powerful resource for pastors, seminary students, and Bible readers.

The Gospel Coalition partnered with us last year to create the Perspectives in Translation forum about Bible translation. They’re doing valuable work, and we encourage you to consider attending their national conference. Everyone who registers for The Gospel Coalition conference between now and Tuesday, March 8, will be eligible for the NIV giveaway.

Andy Rau
February 24, 2011

The Sisters of Sinai and the lost Syriac gospels

Here’s a curious piece of Bible history I wasn’t aware of: over a hundred years ago, two remarkable women—the twin sisters Agnes and Margaret Smith—made an amazing discovery. While visiting a monastery at Mount Sinai, they discovered the oldest known Syriac Gospels. The Evangelical Textual Criticism blog posted a short video telling the story of these two “Sisters of Sinai.” It’s largely an interview with the scholar Janet Soskice, who published a book in 2009 about the sisters:

For more information, see a further interview with Soskice about the sisters and the importance of their discovery.

As Soskice explains, the sisters’ discovery was particularly significant because it provided evidence that the four familiar Gospel accounts were circulating together very early in Christian history. The sisters (who knew a dozen languages between them) also made a splash in the world of theological studies: they received the first theological doctorates awarded to women. Wikipedia has a short entry on the sisters and their published work.

Andy Rau
February 21, 2011

Reviving an ancient Hebrew font

The 1569 Plantin Polyglot Bible is famous for more than just its antiquity—it also showcases Le Bé, a complex and beautiful Hebrew font considered a typographical triumph of its era. Now, experts have used high-tech software and their eye for typography to recreate the rare Bible’s font for use in modern publishing. The font is making its first 21st-century appearance in an ebook publication of Hebrew poetry.

Here’s a short video describing the font’s journey from the yellowed pages of a 1569 Bible to an iPad near you:

Letters lost and found from Tablet Magazine on Vimeo.

If this sound like a simple achievement, consider the complexity of the calligraphic Hebrew font in question:

[Type designer Scott-Martin] Kosofsky had known the type existed but rarely saw it used. “It wasn’t until recently, until the advent of opentype technology, that you could add programming to fonts,” he says. “That — the problem of all the diacriticals that go into biblical and liturgical Hebrew — could be solved.” In other words, Hebrew, with all its vowel and accent signifiers and chanting cues, can amount to 2,000 combinations – a typographic nightmare. The latest tech allows font designers to work digitally with languages that have large character sets (not uncommon in the non-Western world). Metal or early digital type had compromised the aesthetics of many of these older fonts, if they were attempted at all.

Tools (and experts) like this mean that we can not only read texts from the distant past, but we can see the same letters and words the original readers did, complete with typographical flourishes and quirks.

Andy Rau
February 18, 2011

Tour of the Bible, part 2: the Historical Books

Earlier this month, we began a tour of the different sections of the Bible, starting with the books of Moses. Today, we’re continuing our tour with the next section of the Bible: the Historical Books.

The twelve books that comprise the “historical books” cover a large swath of history and contain some of the most important segments of the entire Bible narrative. Taken together, these books tell the story of ancient Israel’s formation, rise to prominence, collapse into moral and physical defeat, and restoration. Many of the most famous characters in the Bible—people like David, Elijah, Solomon, Ahab, Esther, and many others—make their appearance in this section, so even if you’re utterly unfamiliar with the Old Testament, chances are you’ve heard at least snippets from some of their stories.

Here are the historical books in order, along with a link to a famous story from each book:

If you want a vivid glimpse at some of the most compelling storytelling in the Bible, you could do a lot worse than to start here.

February 17, 2011

What’s on your theological shelf?

Reformation 21 has an interesting post about how and why you should organize your theological library. While reading it, I started thinking about the question that comes before organizing: what exactly belongs in a theological library?

Beyond the Bible, there’s a huge sea of books, sermons, and other resources of varying quality that exist to help us in our study of the Bible. Finding the “good” ones can be a daunting task. So we’re yielding the floor to you: what books, sermons and resources does everyone need to include in their own personal theological library?

Note: comments are temporarily disabled here for technical reasons, but we welcome your ideas and feedback on this post at our page on Facebook.

Andy Rau
February 16, 2011

The difference between “S” and “s”

Whenever a Bible translation is released, it’s accompanied by much debate—everybody naturally wants to know how it differs from previous translations. What have the translators changed, and why? Most discussion centers on a handful of controversial translation topics, with hot-button issues like gender roles in the church and sexuality often taking prominence.

Those are fascinating (and necessary) discussions, but give the impression that Bible translation boils down to just wording and re-wording a handful of difficult Bible passages. In reality, some of the “smaller” translation questions can be just as challenging.

Here’s an example of a seemingly tiny issue, detailed in an exchange on the Perspectives in Translation forum: should we capitalize son in Psalm 2:7?

You wouldn’t think that changing the capitalization of one word in one chapter would hold any significance, but it does: capitalizing “son” makes it a clear reference to Jesus, whereas leaving it lowercase leaves that conclusion for the reader to discover. (Biblical Hebrew doesn’t capitalize words like modern English does.) On the surface, “son” is a reference to David’s son Solomon. A modern reader might see a possible Old Testament reference to Jesus here and choose to “make it official” by capitalizing the word; but is that a reasonable translation or is that imposing an interpretation on the text? Did the author of the psalm intend it to be read that way, or even imagine that his words would in retrospect look like a Messianic prophecy?

At the Perspectives forum, two Bible scholars weigh in. I like James Hamilton’s explanation:

The problem with capitalizing son in Psalm 2:7 is that it cuts straight from from 2 Samuel 7 to Jesus. It’s great to get to Jesus, but the short cut keeps readers from seeing the typological development that grows and deepens through the accounts of the sons of David. This can keep us from understanding what Jesus meant when he declared that one greater than Solomon had arrived (cf. Matt 12:42).

So capitalizing son in Psalm 2:7 gets the termination point right, but it can keep us from feeling the buildup of the development that swells and plunges between David and Jesus.

Seeing the thought process behind a tiny translation decision sheds some light for me on the truly epic task that is Bible translation. I’d never suggest that we should ignore the more major and controversial translation questions, but I know that it’s enlightening for me to consider these “minor” questions alongside the bigger ones.

February 14, 2011

Popular Bible Verses on Love for Valentine’s Day

Around holidays like Valentine’s Day, we see traffic spikes from people looking for Bible verses related to those holidays. For example, visits to 1 Corinthians 13, the “Love Chapter,” started to increase yesterday, and we expect it to continue for the rest of the day and into tomorrow.

For all the sappiness and blatant commercialism of Valentine’s Day, it’s still one of the few times during the year that we’re encouraged to express our love and affection for the people in our lives. And since Jesus tells us to love our neighbors, any excuse to celebrate love is fine by us!

We thought we’d save you some time and collect some of the more popular Bible verses about love. Think of these verses collectively as a sort of primer on Christian love:

Psalm 133:1-3

How good and pleasant it is
when God’s people live together in unity!

It is like precious oil poured on the head,
running down on the beard,
running down on Aaron’s beard,
down on the collar of his robe.
It is as if the dew of Hermon
were falling on Mount Zion.
For there the LORD bestows his blessing,
even life forevermore.

1 Corinthians 13:1-13

If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.

Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when completeness comes, what is in part disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put the ways of childhood behind me. For now we see only a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.

1 John 4:18

There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.

1 John 3:14 (CEB)

We know that we have transferred from death to life, because we love the brothers and sisters. The person who does not love remains in death.

Matthew 22:37

Jesus replied: “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”

Proverbs 17:17 (KJV)

A friend loveth at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.

Romans 12:9-13

Love must be sincere. Hate what is evil; cling to what is good. Be devoted to one another in love. Honor one another above yourselves. Never be lacking in zeal, but keep your spiritual fervor, serving the Lord. Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer. Share with the Lord’s people who are in need. Practice hospitality.

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

1 John 3:1

“See what great love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him.”

(All verses are taken from the NIV unless noted otherwise.)

Andy Rau
February 12, 2011

Doubt, contradictions, and the problem of evil: responding to Bart Ehrman

If you follow the world of Bible apologetics, chances are you’ve heard of Bart Ehrman. Ehrman is an evangelical-turned-agnostic New Testament scholar whose books (Misquoting Jesus and others) have put forward a variety of challenges to orthodox Christian beliefs about the history and authority of the Bible.

Ehrman’s approachable debating and writing style (as opposed to the over-the-top rhetoric that characterizes many prominent atheist writers) has prompted many responses from Christian apologists and theologians. One such response takes the form of a new website called the Ehrman Project, and it showcases responses from many different Christian theologians to specific issues raised by Ehrman.

Here’s a sample—”Are the New Testament texts reliable?”

Other videos respond to common questions—raised by Ehrman but certainly not unique to him—about the “problem of evil,” the formation of the Bible canon, and contradictions in the Bible. If these are questions that have troubled you, or if you’re just curious to see a set of polite and reasonable responses to Ehrman, it’s worth investigating.

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