Best of the Blog

Here are three articles from this time three years ago.

•All Bible Verses are Equal, But Some are More Equal than Others

When it was released in 2011, I expected a bigger reaction to The People’s Bible, a new NIV Bible format that places the verses in a font sized based on the volume of traffic for that verse at BibleGateway.com. After all, we place some verses in red if they were spoken by Jesus; soul-winner Bibles come with “Romans Road” type passages already underlined; Key Word Study Bibles only provide the Strong’s Greek or Hebrew index number for selected words³²¹⁸ in a sentence; so why not highlight popular verses in bigger type?

Do you think this has merit, or is this Bible destined to remain a bit of a fringe product?

•How to Spot Pentecostals and Charismatics

This was printed in 1978 by Jesus Outreach Ministries in Fairmont, West Virginia. I don’t believe any sarcasm was intended, rather they were trying to make the Charismatic environment more user-friendly for visitors. I only deleted the bottom section because the person who gave it to me had written on it.

•Kyle Idleman on Identifying Your True Idols

On July 15, 2012 at Southeast Christian Church, Kyle Idleman asked the congregation a series of questions that are worth considering:

The answer to these questions points to what might be God’s primary competition in our lives:

1. What are you most disappointed with? or What do you complain about the most?
2. What do you sacrifice your time and money for?
3. What do you worry about?
4. Where do you go when you get hurt; when life is hard? or Where do you go for comfort?
5. What makes you mad, angry?
6. What brings you the most joy?
7. Whose applause do you long for?

Wednesday Link List

They left the worship band’s spotlights on during the sermon this week, and my pastor saw his shadow, which meant six more points before the benediction. Here are some links as I try to forget… 

Clicking anything below will take you to PARSE, which has exclusive rights to the mid-week link.

• If you didn’t get enough football on the weekend, Chaplain Mike at Internet Monk has a detailed proposal for a football-themed megachurch.
• And then, sometimes, life hands you a story like this one: Justin Bieber, baptismal candidate.
• Ethicist Russell Moore’s long running Q&A series is now a ten-minute podcast. On this sample, he’s asked if a Christian should accept treatment with medical marijuana. (Check out the other four podcasts available, too.)
• Is there eternal security for Christmas presents? A distraught mom comes up with an instant twist on parenting the temper tantrum child.
• What do you get when you cross a progressive Jewish congregation with a black gospel church? Interesting choir music.
• Remember that thing last week where the Pope released a couple of doves and they got attacked? Well… here’s the same story only from one year ago, and with Pope Benedict instead of Francis; deja vu all over again. (Time to rethink this one, yes?)
• I tend to think of the work Compassion International as being in response to naturally occurring catastrophes, drought, famine, etc.; but sometimes the origin of the crisis is political or military.
• A recently recurring topic in light of all the leadership literature: Is it about leading or about pastoring? (Note to Spell-Check: Not pasteurizing.)…
• …Related: If you’re intentionally shepherding is anyone being missed? (But what if it’s a really big church?)
• Moody Press author Nancy Leigh DeMoss has just released a new — wait for it — album of piano music.
• Canada’s first Christian law school is potentially facing some tough opposition.
• Here’s a peek at a faith-based film releasing this fall: The Song, produced by City on a Hill Productions.
• A challenge faced by the producers of modern Bible translations is that some readers want their Bible to sound Biblish.
• Church for Beginners: A liturgical church includes in their bulletin an explanation of why different worship elements are part of the weekly service.
• Should Natalie Grant have exited the Grammy Awards? One writer sees it as a publicity stunt…
• …Here’s my own article about the show, complete with most of Natalie’s second post on Facebook…
• …Another gospel performer wasn’t in the audience at that point; he was having dinner with family after winning two of the trophies in the pre-telecast.
• It’s been done elsewhere for decades, a sitcom for kids involving a girl with lesbian parents is a first for Disney…
• …while across the pond, sex education videos in the UK will be subject to a rating system.
• With a venue confirmed, Dallas, Texas is announced as the host city for the 2014 Harvest America crusade with Greg Laurie…
• …Meanwhile a Christian college in Wisconsin has dropped “Crusaders” as the name for its sports teams. (Maybe they should just change it to Cru.)
• If you hang around certain conservative, fundamentalist environments long enough, you might pick up a selection of falsehoods.
• This is an older link that I come back to every Valentines month for men who feel left behind on the 14th and want to find a wife the Biblical way.
• When academics go off-road: Ben Witherington III explores a connection between rock ‘n roll record marketing and evangelism in the early church. (Link to part four; be sure to check out the other three parts of Rock ‘n Roll and Me.)
• Not sure if Mark Batterson is saying this is an actual title, but “So Far, So God” is a great title for your church annual report.
• Some informed words in defense of the 2011 NIV.
• A Christian blogger with Mormon relatives dissects Ravi Zacharias’ recent foray into LDS country.
• If you’re in ministry, and you’ve moved lately, as you lifted that heavy box you noticed that we tend to hoard books, but often for the wrong reasons.
• The Son of God movie trailer is out, but you already knew that, right? The trailer features the song Hope is What We Crave by For King and Country. There’s a live version of it on the band’s official YouTube page.
• Discovery of the Week: A church in Peterborough, England does an after-school, pre-evangelistic outreach program based on The Chronicles of Narnia. (The .pdf file you can click describes what they do and don’t do in terms of ministry.)
• A short piece gets us thinking about the intersection of desire and expectations.
• For aspiring worship-team guitarists everywhere, the Ten Commandments of Electric Guitar.
• A West Virginia church is praised for taking all the right steps when a volunteer is arrested for child sexual abuse.
• On video, a 3-minute profile of England’s premiere comic/cartoon artist Dave Walker.
• Evangelistically speaking, there are hundreds of definitions at the Dictionary of Christianese.
• I can never resist blog posts where readers are invited to promote their favorite Christian book. (Mine would be a Philip Yancey title!)

…if you’re new to this whole link list thing, I did a rare Weekend Link List about ten days ago with some reruns from 2011.

Want to Own the Most ‘Literal’ Bible?

The answer to the above question is, ‘No, you don’t.’ You simply would get nothing out of each sentence. It’s like those words on the puzzle pages of newspapers where you’re given a quotation and asked to put the words in order. Mean you if what I know.

I was thinking about this yesterday reading an article about Bible translations. By that I mean currently existing translations. I tend to nod off during some discussions on translation history, because I’m not really a history guy, and because I consider it sufficient to know that Eve was tempted by a Septuagint in the garden.

So every once in awhile I check out Kouyanet, the blog of Eddie and Sue Arthur, who work for Wycliffe and admittedly don’t write very much about English Bibles. Still, even if you don’t understand everything, if you have an interest in something it’s good to immerse yourself in what other people are talking about, even if you feel like a car wash attendant in a room of automotive engineers.

Anyway, they recently linked to this article, Lost in Translation by David Shaw at the website of The Fellowship of Independent Evangelical Churches in the UK, and while I personally found the whole article informative, I thought I’d give you a short word-bite from near the end:

…Some argue that because God inspired the words of the original texts that we should try to translate on a word-for-word basis as much as possible. While there is some truth in this, it’s also a rather naïve view of translation. After all, what’s the best translation of “Au revoir”? Well, “Goodbye”. We’ve translated two words with one word, but that’s a good thing because we have clearly conveyed the meaning. To take a biblical example, borrowed from Rod Decker’s excellent brief review of the ESV (see the further reading section below) here’s a word for word ‘translation’ of 2 Corinthians 6:12:

“Not you are being restricted in us you are being restricted but in the intestines of you.”

Of course, that won’t do. And it proves that any translation will have to rearrange and change words in order to convey the meaning. The KJV reflects a more standard English word order but still doesn’t make much sense:

“Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels.”

The ESV moves further away from the Greek word order and imagery:

“You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections.”

That makes more sense but the nature of the ‘restriction’ isn’t clear. Enter the NIV, which says:

“We are not withholding our affection from you, but you are withholding yours from us.”

Has this made more significant changes to words of the original? Certainly. But doesn’t this also convey the meaning more clearly and effectively than the other options? Just from this example we can see that every translation has difficult decisions to make, but the great advantages of the NIV – its accessibility and clarity – still stand.

That’s just a sample passage to whet your appetite to finding more reading on the topic of translation.  I hope it resonates somewhere in the intestines of you.

Intelligent comments welcomed, but if you’re an NIV-hater or KJV-onlyist, please resist the temptation.

• Eddie and Sue Arthur previously at Thinking Out Loud: The Politics of Bible Translation March 11, 2012
• and another of my favorite columns by them we linked to in 2008, the whimsical We’re Running Out of Translation Names. (That was our title, they called it English Bible Version Generator.)  July 31, 2008
• or the equally cynical Definitive Guide to Bible Translation Terms. May 31, 2011
• or simply type “Bible Translation” in quotes in this blog’s search bar in the right margin; you’ll find it’s a recurring topic here.

 

Because Some Bible Verses Are More Important Than Others

Or are they? Nearly a year in, I expected a bigger reaction to The People’s Bible, a new NIV Bible format that places the verses in a font sized based on the volume of traffic for that verse at BibleGateway.com. After all, we place some verses in red if they were spoken by Jesus; soul-winner Bibles come with “Romans Road” type passages already underlined; Key Word Study Bibles only provide the Strong’s Greek or Hebrew index number for selected words³²¹⁸ in a sentence; so why not highlight popular verses in bigger type?

Do you think this has merit, or is this Bible destined to remain a bit of a fringe product?

Wednesday Link List

Church life:

• Hal West, author of  The Pickled Priest and the Perishing Parish : “No one will argue against the fact that since the beginning of Christian history there has existed a tension between two distinct groups in the church – the clergy and the laity. ”  Read what pastors don’t get and what people don’t get.
• A. J. Swoboda: “I think not having our children worship with us in worship can be dangerous. Who else is to teach them why and how we sing? How else are children to learn the ways of worship? …I wonder if something was lost when we split the family up in church?”  Read more at A. J.’s blog.
• Carter Moss: ” I desperately want to hear from God through every avenue possible. That why I love leading at a church that uses movie clips…, TV show clips…, and secular music… every chance we get.” This link has been in my files since August; read Why My Faith (And Yours) Needs Pop Culture.
• He said, she said:  “…[S]he continues to nominate women for the board of elders, something their denomination, the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, allows. [Pastor] Willson has said that only qualified men can be elders at Second Presbyterian.”  A longtime member faces church discipline in Memphis.
• So if you jump through all the hoops and actually get to sing a solo at Thompson Road Baptist Church, you can’t sing a Contemporary Christian Music song or “a song that was made popular by CCM.” In other words, if Casting Crowns covers “Dwelling in Beulah Land” it’s goes off the approved list. (Click the image to isolate the text, and then a 2nd time to enlarge it.)
  
• Yours truly borrows a list of 13 signs of a healthy church, and then adds a description of a very healthy church you may have heard before; all at Christianity 201.
  

Christian blogosphere:

• Mrs. Beamish isn’t too happy with the worship style changes in her local C. of E. (Church of England). Especially the ‘friendlier’ passing of the piece and up-tempo music. A hilarious song posted to YouTube back in ’08.
  
• Lifeway Christian Bookstores are going to continue selling the revised NIV Bible after all. Yawn.
  
• Prodigal Magazine re-launches on March 1st with Allison and Darrell Westerfelt taking the reins.
• Paul Helm, who teaches at Regent College on the phrase, ‘asking Jesus into your heart‘ : “They are using words and phrases that bear a positive relation to the language in which the faith has been officially as preached and confessed by the church through the centuries, but a rather loose relation..” Pray the prayer, read the post.
• This is a new product that not even XXX.Church.Com had heard of when I wrote them this week. Check out My Porn Blocker, currently available at a ridiculously low price.
• Steve McCoy reveals where the treasure is buried: A stash of online articles by Redeemer Presbyterian’s Timothy Keller.   It was derived from a larger list featuring various authors.
  
• CNN’s Belief Blog offers an excellent profile of Ed Dobson along with a look at his latest video My Garden.
  
• I love the tagline for this blog: Was 1611 the last word for the English Bible? The KJV Only Debate Blog is a blog but it looks like the real action is in the forum. “This blog aims to confront the King James controversy head on, and evaluate the claims of KJV-onlyism from a Biblical perspective.The authors are all former proponents of KJV-onlyism. …[W]e acknowledge that there are multiple varieties of the KJV-only position.”
  
• In a first for Canada, a Teen Challenge center in Brandon, Manitoba will launch as a women-only facility.
  
• Want to understand the basics of Christianity?  The Australian website YDYC — Your Destiny, Your Choice — has a number of basic videos explaining salvation.
  
• Here’s a fun video by The Left filmed in a theater in Western Canada, enjoy Cellophane. At GodTube, they cite various faith influences, though their bio doesn’t.
  
• Today is the first day of Lent.  If you have absolutely no idea what that means, you might want to start with this introduction to the church calendar.
  
• All good lists must come to an end; if you’re an otter, don’t forget to say your prayers.
  

CT Comments on Bible Translation Long on Emotion, Short on Rationality

When the piece says “A Christianity Today Editorial,” you know that it was the joint product of the editorial staff, not one rogue writer.  It also means, “this is serious.” In this case, it’s a thoughtful piece that explains the balance that one finds in the 2011 edition of the New International Version (NIV) and the total hypocrisy of the SBC in proposing to ban the translation from its churches, while its bookstore chain is ringing copy after copy after copy through its cash registers.

However, over in the comments section, here’s some of the venom and misinformation that’s out there [with some responses from myself]:

• Translations, like NIV2011, that distort the original language to facilitate a theological agenda that is contrary to God’s Word should not be promoted, encouraged, or tolerated in the church.  [actually, the Committee on Bible Translation represents scholars from various churches]
• Well, this article is deceptive with it’s generalizations rather than specifics with its closing statements … [no actually the closing paragraph is fairly specific, the SBC as a whole is talking one thing and doing another]
  
• Bible sales have gone up, but what is the major translation that has flooded the market? NOT the NIV spoken of in this article, but the NKJV & the ESV [actually some people in the publishing industry would care to differ with your interpretation of the ESV stats — if you have any — and the NKJV is fairly flat right now as well]
  
• I am even more concerned that there seems to be no author credited for this editorial.  [see my comment in the introduction…don’t you just hate it when there’s no individual to attack?…]
• The dissatisfaction with this latest, “gender-accurate” translation of the NIV is widespread, crossing denominational lines.  [uh, actually it’s relatively limited to the SBC]
• I will not use the NIV 2011 version in our ministries and I’m afraid the NIV folks have lost many people like myself. Simply put, they have lost my trust.  [but did you actually read a single chapter of it?]
• The NLT and NCV never made themselves out to be anything but paraphrases with a more gender inclusive nature. [first of all, there’s no such word in linguistics as ‘paraphrase;’ secondly, with 128 translators — not paraphrasers — the NLT is the most translated Bible on the market.]
• …As a pastor, I will not allow a TNIV nor an NIV2011 cross the threshold of my home or office. They are theological poison! Personally I’m a KJV kind of guy… The KJV presents to us the perfect and finished work of the cross. Other translations make faith an outward working which leads us into bondage. [and I hope when you get to heaven, you get to meet people who were saved through the new NIV — this ‘poisonous’ translation — because they will certainly be there…]
  
• An example is Romans 1:17. The NIV translates that in the gospel “a righteousness from God is revealed.”  [talk about missing the point…yes the 1984 edition does say that, but the NIV 2011 moves much closer to what the author of the comment wants — too bad he didn’t bother to check before posting the comment]
  
• The author must have attended the same seminary as Brian McLaren- Oh wait, he never went to seminary and has no theological education of any kind. Why do we let people like this represent us. Christianity Today is out of touch with what Christians believe. This is not about translation methodology, but politically correct tinkering with the text to sell more Bibles to liberal denominations.  [this comment is a fail on so many grounds: (a) the senior staff at CT have sufficient training — including seminary — to do their job and (b) the NIV market has always been Evangelicals; the “liberals” the author describes aren’t going to touch it no matter how hard anyone tries]
  
• For a critique of modern translation theory and practice, see Leland Ryken’s… pamphlet, Choosing a Bible. [probably one of the most overt examples of ESV propaganda out there, and published by the ESV’s publisher within weeks of the ESV translation’s release]
  
• I’m most worried about the true motivations of publishing houses feeding the 80-90% of the world where we already have reliable modern translations with newer translations when those same scholars and publishing houses could be actively partnering to translate and publish for unreached and under-reached people groups.  [on the surface, a good point, but you have to have learned those languages to do that work; instead English translators wrestle with issues that provide background to foreign language translators]
  
• …Tinkering with one thing today is a prelude to tinkering with many more things later depending on one’s own interpretation.  [but actually, if you read Mark Strauss and Gordon Fee’s How to Choose a Translation for All It’s Worth — admittedly published by Zondervan — you learn that with the TNIV, the translators actually reverted back to older forms and poetic structures]
  
• Are we going to rename “Manchester” to “Personchester”? (and any way Chester is a man’s name….)  [Manchester. Yes. That’s where all this has been heading all along]
• …more to follow, I’m sure…

With all of this taking place, there’s been little notice of a quietly growing — now in its third printing — new translation, The Common English Bible (CEB).  Has anyone taken any time to look at the same issues in the CEB? 

Zondervan Reissues The Story in NIV 2011 Edition

Although it wasn’t part of the standard list of books available for reviewers, I begged Zondervan for a copy of The Story, NIV: The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People .   I have a weakness for anything that tries to make the Biblical narrative more flowing, anything which harmonizes the gospels and the Old Testament history books, and anything that does all this in somewhat modern language.

If you have a friend, relative, neighbor, co-worker, etc., who you’ve thought about giving a Bible to, but hesitated, this could be the type of product you’re looking for.  You need to visit an actual Christian bookstore and browse through a copy before deciding.  A concluding page ask the reader, ‘How are you going to respond…?’

This is not exactly a new title, but a reissue of something that already existed in a TNIV edition.  There were 32 chapters there, but only 31 in this new edition, plus they’ve added a children’s edition, The Story for Kids: Discover the Bible from Beginning to End, a teen edition, a number of DVD curriculum-related products, and… well, let’s just list them, it’s easier:

• The Story adult edition
• The Story DVD curriculum
• The Story Church Campaign Kit
• The Story DVD participant’s guide
• Exploring The Story – reference companion
• The Story adult edition in duotone leather
• The Story for Kids
• The Story for Kids elementary curriculum DVD-ROM
• The Story for Kids preschool curriculum DVD-ROM
• The Story Teen Edition
• The Story Teen curriculum DVD
• The Story Spanish edition
• The Story for Children
• The Story for Children Storybook edition
• The Story – Going Deeper

…I think you get the idea.  Everything is a brand these days. 

So is The Story a book or a Bible?  It’s definitely a hybrid.  I would say probably it is more of book in the sense of similar things Walter Wangerin has done, but more of a Bible in the sense that the majority of the content is indeed Bible text.  But not a “take to church or study group” Bible.

The transitional sections in italics are an interesting mix of narrative and commentary.  They have been retained exactly as they were in the TNIV edition, but are in many respects, a most helpful way of bringing the story to life.  Where they appear, they tend to energize the narrative.

Added to the new edition is an introduction by Max Lucado and Randy Frazee.  And that’s all it is, a 3-paragraph introduction that it apparently took two men to write.  Worse, they didn’t bother paraphrasing it for the children’s edition.  Kinda sad to see these authors names exploited in this way.

However, having gotten that observation out of the way, the paperback children’s edition is a refreshingly original product in a market where chronological Bible story books in hardcover — which is available — tend to be the norm.    If there’s a young reader in the family, this paperback chapter book format, mostly devoid of pictures, might be ideal, and at its 9.99 US price, I can see kids ministry leaders purchasing this in bulk. 

As I stated at the outset, I like this sort of product.  Chapter and verse numbers, as well as trying to parallel things in Samuel to things in Chronicles can be confusing to people not already Bible literate, and our goal should be to try to make things easier, not more difficult for people who want to more about what we believe, and more about the Christ story.  But despite the number of variants of this item out there, the challenge continues to be making a greater number of people aware it exists.

TheStory.com website link

Wednesday Link List

Wednesday list lynx

Christianity Today magazine has found that recent articles on worship resonate with people, and that’s reflected in the first two links this week:

• People want services to be accessible, but D. H. Williams asks the question, ‘Are there limits to this strategy?’
• Why did the church embrace the pop/rock style found in today’s modern worship, but not utilize jazz or big band in its day?  Lawrence Mumford looks at the diversity of worship styles.
  
• And over at Relevant Magazine — which we’ll return to later here — Adam Wood reminds us that worship involves the participation of both leader and congregant.
  
• Ever been stuck in a checkout line where the person in front of you seems to be buying out the whole store?  Pete Wilson was, and he was anxious to get on his way, until he suddenly saw the person ahead of him in a different perspective.
  
• I understand a little of where John Shore is coming from.  He’s certainly sympathetic to people who are both gay and professing Christians. [Example]  But does he go too far in one direction?  The blogger known as The Son He Loves thinks so and calls him on it.
  
• Castanea, a word meaning ‘Chestnut tree,’ is also the name of a tribal community living together in Chestnut Hill, Tenn, which serves in this USAToday story as an example of what is called The New Monasticism.
  
• Dan Kimball writes about Francis Chan‘s Erasing Hell with words like these: “It comes from a heart that is broken about hell. The pages themselves almost weep it is so heartfelt written. I know that sounds kind of corny, but it is true. This is written from a broken heart on the topic and that makes all the difference.”
  
• If you’ve got Adobe, here’s the link to the .pdf with the Committee on Bible Translation’s response to the Southern Baptist resolution regarding the updated NIV Bible translation.
• Also lining up to take a shot at the new NIV — with the accompanying fifteen minutes of fame — is the Council on Biblical Manhood and Womanhood.  You can read the .pdf containing the CBT’s response to the CBMW. This best addresses the so-called ‘gender issues’ in the new translation, though it won’t satisfy people who already have their minds made up.
  
• Discovered a new blog this week for our “If You Want Deep, We’ll Give You Deep” department.  Check out this treatment of the subject of atonement.  (Full title: …Without the Theoretical Nonsense.)
• With two potential Mormon Republican presidential candidates, not to mention a Broadway play, here’s ten things you may or may not know about the faith of your LDS friends.
  
• And speaking of cults, Darrell at Stuff Fundies Like thinks that the proponents of the kind of faith he blogs about are actually a bit of a contradiction.
  
• There’s a Christian Game Development Conference.  Who knew?  But never underestimate the popularity of computer gaming.  By the way, for bonus points, visit their site and try to find clues as to where the conference is taking place.
  
• Yet another CT piece; this one on how in their zeal to expand, multi-site churches with satellite campuses are now crossing state lines. 
• A Pew Forum survey shows that Evangelical leaders are less concerned about Islam and more concerned about creeping secularism.
• Jon Acuff has four reasons why people ditch church in the summer.  (Reasons not really good enough.)
• Finally one more from Jon Acuff and his article on Christian satire for Relevant magazine, where we find today’s closing image:

Southern Baptists Reject New NIV Translation

SBC shindig in Phoenix, four days ago

“We’ll get Mikey to try it, he hates everything”
classic Life cereal commercial line

At their annual convention in Phoenix, Arizona, “messengers” of the Southern Baptist Convention voted overwhelmingly “not to commend” the newly revised edition of the New International Version translation of the Bible, aka NIV 2011.

Their unstated reason is simple: They don’t like it.

Specifically, they don’t like it when passages that traditionally referred to males — using words like he, him, his, man, men, etc. — get changed to gender neutral pronouns.

But gender neutral is usually how the original texts read.  In the book, How To Choose A Bible Translation for All It’s Worth by Gordon Fee and Mark Strauss, the latter talks about working on the translation committee for the TNIV.  He notes that the Greek “anthropos” — from which we no doubt get the word anthropology, the study of human civilization — refers to  ‘person’ or ‘persons.’  You could say, tongue in cheek, that “in anthropos there is neither male nor female.” 

But he goes on to explain that forms like “Son of Man” cannot be jettisoned so easily, since they are both a poetic form and a doctrinal statement.  In other words, God is not a ‘she’ in either the TNIV or the NIV-2011, though this is how some hot-headed people would have you believe it reads.   It’s the end of doctrinal purity as we know it.

Consider this verse which we’ve been discussing here on this blog and at Christianity 201 recently:

If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.

What possible major doctrinal violation takes place when I paraphrase that as:

If anyone would come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

[The so-called “singular to plural” crisis is, in this case, solved by the antecedent use of “one.”]

The answer is: Nothing.  It’s a much closer rendering of what Jesus is saying here, unless, of course, he is extending the invitation of discipleship entirely to males.

The Southern Baptists simply don’t like the change.  And they don’t like it with the same venom that characterizes King James Version Only people.  (And yes, I said King James Version only, which KJ-Onlyites hate because it concedes there are in fact other versions.) 

You can read the wording of their resolution here.

Furthermore, when you read it, you’ll note this interesting clause:

RESOLVED, That we respectfully request that LifeWay not make this inaccurate translation available for sale in their bookstores;

Ah yes, the power of an economic boycott.  The SBC controls the LifeWay chain of bookstores and websites; an organism about which I’ve already expressed a certain degree of contempt here.  This is the group that believes women should not teach men, but rakes in huge piles of cash daily from the sales of books by Beth Moore.  This is the same mentality that caused a group of 800 male pastors to turn their chairs so that their backs were to the podium during an address being given by Billy Graham’s daughter, Anne Graham Lotz; a story referred to in a chapter of J. Lee Grady’s book Ten Lies The Church Tells Men, that was referred to here a few days ago.

What is Zondervan to do about all this?  The remaining editions of the NIV-1984 version in the Thinline and Church Bible (formerly Pew Bible) style — the two most popular formats — have already been discontinued and remaining copies donated to mission agencies.  The devotional, teen and study Bibles are not in reprint awaiting the fall release of the rest of the NIV-2011 product line.

Zondervan made an “all-in” commitment to the new translation, and is now met with this slap in the face from North America’s largest Protestant denomination.

But largest for how long?  As we reported here on Wednesday, USAToday’s religion page states that baptism statistics for the SBC are at a virtual all-time low for the past two generations, dropping to 1950s levels.  The denomination is going the way of many mainline Protestant ones; losing relevancy and losing younger families.

As for the translation issue:  C’mon guys (which implies both male and female here).  Look at the example above from Luke 9 and tell me that some element of the Christian faith is being compromised by the paraphrase I offered. 

If not, then suck it up. 

Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today and forever.  Our faith is based on unchanging truth.

But the English language is changing, and male-dominated, patriarchal language simply doesn’t mean what you think it means anymore; it isn’t heard that way, and simply doesn’t cut it.

~Paul Wilkinson

Notations on Galatians — NIV 2011

Technology may not always be as labor-saving as it should be, but in this case, it definitely helps.   This is an extension of something I did last week at Christianity 201, and began with the discovery that in revising the NIV for the new release for March, 2011, some books of the Bible got changed more than others.   The second-most modified text was in III John. The most greatly updated text was Galatians.

The red text indicates 1984 text that was deleted, and the green text indicates the 2011 replacement version.   It’s not just whimsical to play Bible translator and ask yourself what might be behind the revisions you see here, it’s actually good Bible study.

Note:  Section headers, while part of the copyrighted texts of the respective versions are not considered part of Biblical text.   This comparison was done at textdiff.com … Care was taken to place the translations of each chapter in the correct order for comparison purposes, so yes, in the fruit of the spirit passage, “patience” is the current text and “forbearance” is the revision.    32.21% of the verses in Galatians saw some reconstruction.   Some additional verses had other word changes or punctuation changes… Text as accessed 22.11.10 at BibleGateway.com … For the sake of space, this comparison does not include the footnotes.

Chapters two through six continue after the break.

Chapter One

1 Paul, an apostle—sent not from men nor by a man, but by Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised him from the dead— 2 and all the brothers and sisters[a] with me,

To the churches in Galatia:

3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, 4 who gave himself for our sins to rescue us from the present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, 5 to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen.
No Other Gospel
6 I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you byto live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ. 8 But even if we or an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached to you, let himthem be eternally condemned!under God’s curse! 9 As we have already said, so now I say again: If anybody is preaching to you a gospel other than what you accepted, let himthem be eternally condemned!under God’s curse!

10 Am I now trying to win the approval of men,human beings, or of God? Or am I trying to please men?people? If I were still trying to please men,people, I would not be a servant of Christ.
Paul Called by God
11 I want you to know, brothers,brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not something that man made up.of human origin. 12 I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

13 For you have heard of my previous way of life in Judaism, how intensely I persecuted the church of God and tried to destroy it. 14 I was advancing in Judaism beyond many Jews of my own age among my people and was extremely zealous for the traditions of my fathers. 15 But when God, who set me apart from birth[a]my mother’s womb and called me by his grace, was pleased 16 to reveal his Son in me so that I might preach him among the Gentiles, I didmy immediate response was not to consult any man,human being. 17 nor did I did not go up to Jerusalem to see those who were apostles before I was, but I went immediately into Arabia and laterArabia. Later I returned to Damascus.

18 Then after three years, I went up to Jerusalem to get acquainted with Peter[b]Cephas[b] and stayed with him fifteen days. 19 I saw none of the other apostles—only James, the Lord’s brother. 20 I assure you before God that what I am writing you is no lie. 21 Later

21 Then I went to Syria and Cilicia. 22 I was personally unknown to the churches of Judea that are in Christ. 23 They only heard the report: “The man who formerly persecuted us is now preaching the faith he once tried to destroy.” 24 And they praised God because of me.