More books have come out of boxes for my library, after my move to the home office (still without a name). My copy of the first edition of the New International Version (1978) floated to the surface. The glue is dried and sections are all broken, but I still cling to this Bible. Here’s the copyright page: Continue reading
A Translation of the Bible is the inspired Word of God.
Introduction:
1. Without Divine inspiration, the Bible would be the most unreliable book known.
2. Emperor Diocletian ordered wholesale destruction of the Bible (A.D. 302). But
Constantine then commanded large numbers of Scriptures be made available to the churches of his day (A.D. 330). God has preserved some 5500 small to large “fragments” of the New Testament until today.
3. The Bible is “the living oracles” entrusted to man (Acts 7:38).
Discussion: Continue reading
Kevin Pendergrass has a good article, posted yesterday, on his blog. He provides some background history and a bit of information about how Bible translation is done.
And any and every English translation of the Scriptures is a translation and cannot, by the very nature of the translation process … communicate word-for-word every time what the original source text says. A strict word-for-word translation is a unicorn. It does not and cannot exist. Every translation by its very nature contains an “interpretation of meaning.” Meaning must absolutely be interpreted—and mediated to the reader—at every turn.
In an appendix he evaluates some Bible versions, most of them older English versions.
The article is well worth your time.
To get a devotional by email on the NLT.to site, you have to give them lots of personal information. No thanks! About the only thing they don’t ask for is your shoe size. That’s not a service, it’s a data-collection effort by the company.
Even if the version wasn’t my favorite, the site was once the best I’d ever seen, since it offered the Bible text only. (That’s my number one criterion.) Later, they offered the devotional material by email. It’s still one of the better ones. Continue reading
If you’ve been thinking about buying a print Bible in the NET version, this might be the time to do it. The compact Bible in brown cover with Smyth-sewn binding is now just $6.50. A box of 32 goes for $100.00. They make great gifts.
You can order at this link. This is not an affiliate link. TFR receives nothing for this recommendation.
NET is a solid translation, available free online, with more than 60,000 notes, mostly related to the process of translation.
Americans awoke to stunning election results. I admit to a sense of relief that the Democrat nominee will not afflict the nation with harmful policies of every type. That relief at the moment is overpowering concerns for the future.
God controls the affairs of men. He delights in upsets. What appears stable and unbeatable to mere humans he upturns with a mere word. In the halls of power men plan and plot, but God continues to do his will. Continue reading
In Jeremiah’s condemnation of Moab, he mentions a number of its cities along the length of the nation, which lay to the east of the Dead Sea. Among them, this one:
City of Madmen, you will also be destroyed.
A destructive army will march against you.
Jer 48.2b
Madmen is a Hebrew word, not English. It is not where mad men live. Continue reading
There must have been no greater exclamation among the Jews of the first century than that which Andrew declared to his brother Simon and what Philip told his friend Nathaniel: “We have found the Messiah!” Jn 1.41, 45. One can feel the excitement in those words. The NET Bible rightly ends it with an exclamation point. Continue reading
Paul’s letter to the Philippians is known, appropriately, as the letter of joy. The topic is an important keynote, all the more so because Paul was in prison when he wrote it. So it is noteworthy when, at one point in the letter, Paul says he writes “with tears.” Do you know what it is that causes his tears, and why the subject brings him to tears? Read Php 3.
Philippians is less known as a letter of mission cooperation. Paul opens and closes with thanksgiving for their participation in his effort. This literary technique, called inclusio(n), marks their financial gifts as a major theme of the letter. Perhaps we don’t notice it because we lack the missionary spirit the Philippian saints had, or because we’re reading commentaries whose authors don’t have it and therefore treat it briefly. Continue reading
Slightly imperfect, but a great deal on hardback edition of the Plain English Bible. See details here.
Very interesting project here, a shame it’s not an updated Bible version:
http://www.bibliotheca.co/
There are a few Bibles out there with just the text, no chapter or verse divisions or notes or other distractions. Are you aware of any of these? If so, please provide a link or description on the comments.
Even though I’m not a fan of that foot-loose and fancy-free paraphrase called The Message, I happened across a couple of items in it I thought were good.
Mr. Peterson, the author of the work, describes patience, in Galatians’ fruit of the Spirit, as “a willingness to stick with things,” and self-control as being “able to marshal and direct our energies wisely.”
Those seem to be fairly good depictions, the latter one especially, as far as they go.
Also, from the two descriptions, it’s possible to see that a relationship exists between the two.
How would you qualify these descriptions of the two qualities that the Spirit of God produces in the saint?
On the nature of languages, grammaticist and author Maria Tereza de Queiroz Piacentini writes,
As the linguist José Luiz Fiorin explains in the magazine Língua Portuguesa no. 26, “The meaning of expressions is formed as a unit and not by the sum of the words which compose them.”
This is a more elegant way of saying that words acquire their meaning in context, both the immediate grammatical structure and the larger social and historical setting. Continue reading
YOUR BIBLE VERSION
Your Bible version, even if
King James himself decreed it,
Will do no good, in covers stiff,
If you never bother to read it.
From LifeWay’s prez Thom Rainer.
2012 – Based on Dollar Sales
2012 – Based on Unit Sales
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