Tyndale House Magazine on William Tyndale

The newly branded World of the Bible magazine (formerly known as TH ink) is now available from Tyndale House – with a special issue marking William Tyndale’s life, work, and legacy.

More information about signing up to receive the magazine is available here, from where a digital version of the magazine can be read.

Themelios 49, 1 (April 2024)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

Brian J. Tabb and Benjamin L. Gladd

Announcing the Carson Center for Theological Renewal

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Baggy Trousers: Approaching Theological Study

Dave Brunn

Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding

This article argues that much of the controversy surrounding gender in Bible translation is unnecessary. One reason is that many of the discussions about this issue have focused almost exclusively on the way nonliteral versions translate gender, giving insufficient attention to the way gender is handled in versions that identify as literal. A careful, objective examination of both kinds of versions together will show that the two sides of this discussion are not as far apart as some have supposed. While there are differences between the various versions, this article will demonstrate that the most significant distinction between the way literal and nonliteral versions handle gender in translation lies in the frequency rather than the nature of the adjustments.

Melvin L. Otey

The Ancient Pedigree of Homosexuality as the Sin of Sodom

Scholars disagree about the precise nature of the sin that provokes God’s wrath in Genesis 19. In fact, multiple transgressions are involved, including fornication, rape, and inhospitality. Christian exegetes traditionally emphasize the apparently homoerotic aspects of the Sodomites’ demand to “know” the angels inside Lot’s home. However, some modern scholars isolate the aggressors’ inhospitality to the exclusion of any potential sexual deviance and allege that the emphasis on fornication, especially homosexual intercourse, is a historically recent phenomenon. This article critiques this assertion by demonstrating that a tradition within Second Temple Judaism and the primitive church attributes sexual sins, including homosexuality, to Sodom and its neighbors.

Dan Martin

Pedagogy and Biblical Theology: Tracing the Intertextuality of the Book of Proverbs

This paper articulates a provisional thesis, namely, that we need a pedagogical category within our biblical theological frameworks, on the basis that such a category was in the New Testament authors’ minds. I begin by outlining the challenges of integrating the book of Proverbs into biblical theology to date, before highlighting the value of intertextuality as the primary inductive method for constructing biblical theology. I then demonstrate through a ‘worked example’ the mutually interpretive canonical relationship of a Proverbs text with the New Testament, providing a tentative basis for a pedagogical biblical theological category. I conclude by outlining how this thesis can be tested and developed through further research.

Adam Friend

Filial Revelation and Filial Responsibility: (Dis)obedient Sonship and The Religious Leaders in Matthew 11–16

Sonship appears in every section, at every turning point, and on the lips of every character in Matthew’s Gospel. In determining the motif’s function, the religious leaders have largely been neglected. This study analyzes Matthew’s development of the motif of sonship in Matthew 11:1–16:11, arguing that the religious leaders clarify the positive concept of sonship from their provision of its negative example. For Matthew, sonship must be actualized in obedience.

Garrett S. Craig

The Divine Identity in 1 Peter: The Father, Christ, and the Spirit in Relation

Traditionally the discipline of New Testament studies has not been welcoming to a Trinitarian understanding of God. In recent years, however, some scholars working in the discipline have argued for the positive exegetical benefits for what they have called a “Trinitarian hermeneutic.” While working within the historical-grammatical paradigm, a Trinitarian hermeneutic seeks to understand the text’s God-talk by attending to the relations between the Father, Christ, and the Spirit. By using this method, the article argues that the divine identity found in the letter of 1 Peter puts pressure on its readers to articulate an understanding of God that agrees with later Trinitarian confessions.

Christopher Osterbrock

The Spiritual Utility of Calvin’s Correspondence during the Strasbourg Years

Calvin’s letters are no mere collection of personal correspondence but served him in his lifelong spiritual formation. Of note are those letters collected during his time in Strasbourg (1538–1541). This study argues for and assesses the unique spiritual utility of Calvin’s correspondence during the Strasbourg years. The reformer is observed in these letters examining himself, seeking counsel and companionship, and recording the evolution of his philosophy of ministry, all this while shepherding his French refugee church under Martin Bucer’s mentorship. Calvin’s letters evidence a desire for theological implication through reciprocated dialogue, which pastors and laypersons alike ought to consider.

Nathan Sherman

A Change in Kind, Not Degree: Labels, Identity, and an Evaluation of “Baptistic Congregationalists”

How do we decide what to label people of centuries past when they had no clear labels for themselves? Should we describe seventeenth century Baptists as “Baptists” if that was not what they called themselves? Matthew Bingham has recently argued that instead of using the label “Particular Baptists” for the English Calvinistic Baptists of the 1640s and 50s, historians would more clearly describe their subjects as “baptistic congregationalists.” Is Bingham justified in his use of this neologism? While this article might be considered a book review – which several others have already contributed – it also contributes to the debates about wider religious labels of Early Modern England.

Obbie Tyler Todd

What Republicanism Is This? An Introduction to Christian Republicanism (1776–1865)

While the term “Christian republicanism” is known to most historians of the early republic, very few have attempted to explicate its unique theology or to identify its various religious, moral, and even racial permutations in the church. Christian republicanism was much more than just a set of political or social commitments. It was also a loose theological system. This article provides an introduction to Christian republicanism, tracing its beliefs, defining its boundaries, and chronicling its lifespan in the early United States when it flourished in the American mind.

Roger W. Fay

John Wesley and Faith at Aldersgate

The importance of justification by faith to the thinking of John Wesley (1703–1791) both during and after his Aldersgate Street experience in May 1738 has long been doubted by some Wesley scholars. This article demonstrates that the historical data surrounding Aldersgate is compelling and points to the validity of Wesley’s own interpretation of that occasion. A reprise of the historical data, coupled with an examination of some alternative interpretations by distinguished modern Wesley scholars, demonstrates the weak historical basis for interpretations that downplay justification by faith. John Wesley remains an important and instructive figure in the history of evangelical revivals.

Ryan Reed

The House Divided: An Assessment of the American Neo-Evangelicals’ Doctrine of Scripture

Carl F. H. Henry, Harold Lindsell, and Bernard Ramm represent three of the most formative voices within the neo-evangelical movement in America. Nevertheless, these three figures held to three different tones and methodologies on the doctrine of Scripture. Lindsell represents the evangelicals that saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical authenticity, as seen in his works, The Battle for the Bible and The Bible in the Balance. Though closer to the Lindsellian view, Henry saw inerrancy as a test for evangelical consistency rather than authenticity. Ramm represents evangelicals that affirmed a broad concept of inerrancy but did not see it as either the test of authenticity or consistency. This particular issue would cause early cracks in the unity of the new evangelical movement. By examining these three figures’ understanding of the doctrine of Scripture, this paper will show how the early neo-evangelical leaders struggled to decide how clearly they would identify with their fundamentalist roots.

Robert Golding

Swimming in a Sanctimonious Sea of Subjectivity: A Proposal for Christian Authenticity in a Made-Up World

There is a curious tendency in modern culture to simultaneously reject objective truth (e.g., “live your truth”) and to live as if it were real (e.g., “you must fight for the truth”). Objectivity has worked its way back into the subjectivity of postmodernism. This is not pure postmodernism, nor a return to the modernism that preceded it. This is a new phase, which I call metamodernism (a term coined elsewhere). This paper first explains metamodernism (sections 1–2). Then, it offers some suggestions for Christians to rebut metamodernism (section 3). Finally, it concludes with an anecdote to better explain the recommendation of the third section (section 4).

Luke Johnson

“Salvation Without Spin”: How the Gospel of Christ Subversively Fulfills the Prayer Wheels of Tibetan Buddhism

With present calls for inter-religious dialogue, Christianity must relate to major world religions in specific ways to distinguish its uniqueness in belief and practice. This article uses one of the five “magnetic points” of J. H. Bavinck, “I and salvation,” to demonstrate how Christianity carries out Hendrik Kraemer’s notion of “subversive fulfillment,” specifically with the prayer wheels of Tibetan Buddhism. The article first shows how Christianity confronts a trust in religious objects for salvation. Second, Christianity challenges a belief in mere mantras for spiritual help. Third, Christianity teaches that humans cannot gain merit through religious works. Instead, Christianity offers true deliverance through faith in the person and work of Jesus Christ.

Book Reviews

Evangelical Review of Theology 45, 1 (February 2021)

The latest Evangelical Review of Theology, published by The World Evangelical Alliance, is now online and available in its entirety as a pdf here.

Editor’s Introduction

The Young, the Not-So-Young and the Very Old

Efraim Tendero

As I Hand Off the Baton

Wesley Hill

When Christians Disagree

In this essay, a widely respected author, known for both his defence of traditional marriage and his irenic treatment of those who view the issue differently, probes the problem of sharp divisions amongst professing Christians and challenges some of the prevailing approaches to these divisions.

Frank Hinkelmann

The European Evangelical Alliance: An Historical Sketch

In the April 2020 ERT, Frank Hinkelmann, Austrian church historian and president of the European Evangelical Alliance, told the fascinating tale of how the EEA, now part of the World Evangelical Alliance, was originally founded as a counter-movement to it. In this sequel, Hinkelmann continues the story by describing the EEA’s evolution and significance up to the present.

Benjamin Isola Akano

Promoting Quality Worship Experience in Contemporary Nigeria

Many churches around the world struggle to recognize diversity in ways that overcome racial and ethnic barriers and unify the body of Christ. This article draws on concepts from communication studies to develop ways to intentionally improve intercultural relationships, with illustrations from Nigeria where the presence of hundreds of distinct ethnic groups makes virtually every congregation intercultural.

Francis Jr. S. Samdao

A Baptist Quadrilateral? A Filipino Outsider’s Perspective on Baptist Identity

Baptists are a particularly diverse stream of Christians, partly because their theological convictions empower individual decision making. This article discusses colourfully how the diversity of Baptists is reflected in the Philippines today. It seeks to articulate the core features of the Baptist identity and encourages Baptists both to enrich and to be open to learning from other parts of the body of Christ rather than isolating themselves.

Wayne Detzler

J.B. Phillips: From Paraphrase to Translation

Eighty years ago, there were few modern Bible translations. In the 1940s, J. B. Phillips initiated a modern translation of the New Testament. But his work gets little notice today. This article tells the story of Phillips and his project, offering important insights on the value and limitations of attempts to modernize the Bible message.

Mary Douglas

God and Humanity Brought Together: The Incarnation as Gospel

The Incarnation is celebrated at Christmas but do we really grasp its full import? This essay draws on the fourth-century church father Athanasius – one of the greatest defenders of the orthodox Christian conviction that Jesus Christ was truly God and truly man – to support its claim that evangelicals today impoverish their gospel witness by highlighting Jesus’ death and resurrection and overlooking the essential contribution of the Incarnation to our redemption.

Benjamin Marx

Clothing and Exchange of Garments in the Bible, as a Picture of God’s Dealings with His People

This article investigates the imagery of clothing and exchange of garments through the entire Christian canon (in nine books from Genesis to Revelation) to identify the redemptive analogies drawn by the biblical writers. From the beginning, God takes the initiative to clothe his people and thus restore our dignity, worth and relationship to him.

Jim Reiher

Did the Gospel of Matthew Come First? An Historian’s View

This essay takes us on an enlightening trip through numerous early church fathers to explain why the author believes Matthew was the first Gospel and why this issue is important. It provides a valuable introduction to and critical examination of what we know about the origin of the Gospels.

Book Reviews

Journal of Language, Culture, and Religion 1, 1 (2020)

The Journal of Language, Culture, and Religion is a new, somewhat niche open-access publication ‘devoted to explorations of how language intersects with culture and religion’, published by Dallas International University.

According to the website, ‘this first issue contains two articles from DIU alumni working with the Kwakum people in Cameroon, introducing the people group and publishing their orthography, which they helped to create. Two other articles focus on Bible translation consultation: one focusing on power dynamics and the other focusing on training locals in their own language’.

The entire journal is available as a pdf here.

Ink 5 (Spring 2020)

The fifth issue of ink, published by Tyndale House, Cambridge, is now available, this one looking at ‘those who worked so diligently through history – sometimes under threat of their lives – to make printed Scripture as reliable and accessible as possible’. There’s also a piece from Peter Head, exploring ‘what we know about the letter-carriers who delivered the epistles to their recipients’.

UK residents can sign up here to receive issues through the post, but the publication is also available as a pdf here.

Themelios 44, 3 (December 2019)

The latest Themelios is online here (and available here as a single pdf), containing the below articles.

Editorial

D.A. Carson

But That’s Just Your Interpretation!

Strange Times

Daniel Strange

Remembering a Principal’s Principles

Robert S. Smith

Cultural Marxism: Imaginary Conspiracy or Revolutionary Reality?

What are we to make of Cultural Marxism? This article seeks to answer that question, first, by outlining the key elements and legacy of classical Marxism; second, by exploring the neo-Marxism of Antonio Gramsci; third, by assessing the main ideas and impact of “the Frankfurt School”; and, fourth, by offering some reflections on (i) the links between these thinkers and various contemporary developments, (ii) the wisdom of employing the term Cultural Marxism, and (iii) how Christians should respond to the current “culture wars” that are polarizing the Western world.

Hans Madueme

Adam and Sin as the Bane of Evolution? A Review of Finding Ourselves After Darwin

The diverse essays in Stanley Rosenberg’s edited volume Finding Ourselves After Darwin: Conversations on the Image of God, Original Sin, and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2018) offer a Christian analysis of the human person in light of evolutionary thinking. The recommendations to revise our understanding of original sin and theodicy raise particularly challenging questions. Traditional interpretations of Scripture, for instance, are often devalued in order to reduce tensions with our current scientific understanding. Additionally, the more radical arguments undercut doctrines that earlier Christians believed are pivotal to the biblical story. Overall, these noteworthy essays represent a wide range of creative possibilities for updating our theological anthropology in line with a post-Darwinian setting, but they are less convincing when justifying the theological cost for doing so.

William D. Mounce

Do Formal Equivalent Translations Reflect a Higher View of Plenary, Verbal Inspiration?

The article begins by establishing five categories of translation theory and argues that functional translations like the NIV do in fact reflect the meaning of every Greek word, but not in the same way as formal equivalent translations do. Therefore, formal equivalent translations cannot claim a higher view of inspiration.

Matthew Swale

Power for Prayer through the Psalms: Cassiodorus’s Interpretation of the Honey of Souls

Exegesis, prayer, and spiritual formation converge in the Psalms commentary written by Cassiodorus (490–584). Each psalm’s exegesis ends with a “conclusion” considering the implications for morality, doctrine, or prayer. This study focuses on how Cassiodorus’s exegesis of the Psalms provides power for prayer. First, Cassiodorus’s rich expositions of the Psalms of Ascent and Psalm 142 illustrate his approach to the Psalter as God’s provision of superior, life-changing words. Second, prayer flows from Cassiodorus’s handling of individual psalms in four ways: prayerful exegesis, prayer exemplars, prayer templates, and prayer as the means to psalmic formation.

Kenneth J. Stewart

The Oxford Movement and Evangelicalism: Initial Encounters

Commemorations of the birth of the Oxford Movement (later known as Anglo-Catholicism) have regularly intimated certain early commonalities with evangelicalism, especially within the Church of England. It was so at the 1933 centenary of the launch of the movement; such hypotheses have been given fresh life with the 2017 release of the Oxford Handbook of the Oxford Movement. This essay examines the basis for these suggestions and finds them wanting.

Kyle Beshears

Athens without a Statue to the Unknown God

Apatheism is indifference and apathy toward the existence of God. In our secular age, a person adopts apatheism when they feel a sense of existential security absent God, effectively dissolving their reason, motivation, and will to care about questions related to his existence. This indifference presents a stronger challenge for evangelism than does religious pluralism, agnosticism, and atheism. For this reason, evangelicals ought to explore ways of engaging apatheism.

Mark Boone

Inerrancy Is Not a Strong or Classical Foundationalism

The general idea of strong foundationalism is that knowledge is founded on well warranted beliefs that do not derive any warrant from other beliefs and that all our other beliefs depend on these foundational ones for their warrant. Although inerrancy posits Scripture as a solid foundation for theology, the idea that the doctrine of biblical inerrancy involves a strong foundationalist epistemology is deeply problematic. In fact, inerrancy does not require any particular view of the structure of knowledge, and notable sources on inerrancy tout it in ways inconsistent with most forms of strong foundationalism.

Daniel Wiley

The God Who Reveals: A Response to J.L. Schellenberg’s Hiddenness Argument

The challenge of divine hiddenness has become one of the greatest advocates for skepticism in modern philosophical debate. From this challenge, Schellenberg has developed the now acclaimed hiddenness argument. For Schellenberg, an all-loving God would be always open to personal relationships with finite creatures, and thus all nonbelief would derive from resistance to God. However, the existence of nonresistant nonbelievers, or those who have never resisted the idea of God, must prove that God does not exist, for surely an all-loving God would leave enough evidence of himself to convince finite creatures of his existence and prevent nonresistant nonbelief. In response, I argue that (1) openness to personal relationships and love are not as correlated as the hiddenness argument demands, (2) nonresistant nonbelief is not provable, and (3) Schellenberg fails to reason to God’s omni-benevolence apart from Scripture.

Book Reviews

Mission Frontiers 40, 5 (September-October 2018)

The September-October 2018 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by the U.S. Center for World Mission, contains a number of articles devoted to the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators.

The editor, Rick Wood, Writes:

‘The latest edition of MF delves into the remarkable advances being made by Wycliffe Bible Translators around the world today. It highlights Wycliffe’s rich and long-standing history and updates current inroads being made in Bible translation. Modern-day technology has enabled translators to not only speed up the translation process but to also improve the quality of the end product by including a wide range of people in the translation process. This issue includes articles about the use of apps, the development of new fonts and even a visual Bible being used for the Deaf that are all making God’s Word easily accessible in new ways. Enjoy personal stories of the ways God has moved in the hearts of individuals through their involvement with Wycliffe. Be inspired by the ways that Wycliffe is breaking down language barriers through effective translation and as a result how the Good News of Jesus is moving rapidly into the hearts of many across the globe.’

Individual articles can be accessed from here, and the whole issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

The Bible Explored

The Canadian Bible Society has a video here (lasting just over eight minutes), which ‘explains some of the history of the Bible and how it became the most widely distributed book in history, including its writing, canonization, and translation into other languages such as English’.

Mission Frontiers 37, 5 (September-October 2015)

The September-October 2015 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by the U.S. Center for World Mission, contains a number of articles looking at ‘Setting the Scriptures Free in a Digital Age’.

Editor Rick Wood writes:

‘In this issue of MF we feature the tremendous power of God’s people to speed the completion of desperately needed Bible translations when average Jesus followers are empowered to take ownership in the process of Bible translation. The spread of digital technology along with crowdsourcing Bible translation methods within a people opens the door of hope that we could actually see a Bible translation in the language of every people group that needs one in just the next 10 years... This convergence of digital technology and crowdsourcing in Bible translation has earth shaking potential because the word of God is the essential element in the growth of the church within every people. Likewise, the current lack of Scriptures in many peoples is hindering the spread of the church and the gospel...

‘[I]ndigenous churches around the world that lack adequate Scriptures in their languages are starting to take matters into their own hands—empowered by new digital tools...  They are refusing to be dependent upon outsiders to find the time to get around to them and are taking ownership of the translation process.’

Individual articles can be accessed from here, and the whole issue (3 MB) can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Douglas Moo on Bible Translation and the NIV

Douglas J. Moo, We Still Don’t Get It: Evangelicals and Bible Translation Fifty Years After James Barr (Zondervan, 2014).

2015 sees the 50th anniversary of the New International Version translation of the Bible – or, more exactly, the 50th anniversary of the commencement of the translation committee which would lead to the eventual publication of the New Testament in 1973, the full Bible in 1978, and updates in 1984 and 2011.

Douglas Moo, noted New Testament scholar and current chair of the NIV’s translation committee, delivered the above paper (available as a pdf here) at this year’s meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society in San Diego.

He summarises the main concerns of the essay as follows:

‘Specifically, I highlight three basic and generally agreed-upon linguistic principles that have too often been ignored in modern Bible translation. First, linguistics is not a prescriptive but a descriptive enterprise; second, meaning resides not at the level of individual words but at the level of collocations of words in clauses, sentences, and ultimately discourses; and third, the meaning of individual words is expressed not in a single word gloss but in a semantic field.’ (3-4)

It’s a fairly short piece, reflecting on the NIV, the influence of James Barr’s seminal The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961), along with some nice moments of rumination on where Moo himself has fallen short in practice.

Missio Dei 5, 1 (February 2014) on Missional Hermeneutics

The current issue of Missio Dei: A Journal of Missional Theology and Praxis is devoted to Missional Hermeneutics, with main articles and abstracts as below. Individual essays are available from here, and the whole issue can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Mark Love

Missional Interpretation: The Encounter of a Holy God through a Living Text

This article reframes missional interpretation with questions about God’s identity and the nature of Scripture. The author examines the relationship between God’s holiness and the nature of Scripture as texts that correspond to God’s reality. On this basis, the author makes a case for communal reading practices that reflect the implications of God’s relationship to the text.

Greg McKinzie

Currents in Missional Hermeneutics

Recent contributions to the development of missional hermeneutics are significant, though they indicate that a great deal of unexplored territory remains. This essay offers a model for plotting current themes and emphases among missional interlocutors, on which basis the author proposes an integration of key dimensions of missional theology. In conversation with current missional hermeneutical proposals, the author then develops five theses that signal a trajectory for revisioning the hermeneutical spiral.

Derran Reese

Contesting Culture: Contextualizing Worship in Northern Thailand

Contextualization has become a central topic within missiology over recent decades. Though the conversation has progressed, most theories and practices are still based on an insufficient understanding of how cultures function. This article first argues that contextualization is not so much about the act of communication between the missionary and the local community but the faith community’s contestation of the meaning of shared cultural symbols and practices, including those elements that supposedly lead to syncretism, as they are employed in service to the triune God. The article then narrates how the author’s mission team in northern Thailand has implemented this approach to contextualization in its communal worship practices.

Sean Todd

Cultural Issues in Translation: The Thai Easy-to-Read Version

This article compares various Thai translations of the Bible and calls upon translators to pay closer attention to five aspects of culture. The author argues that not only the original meaning but also the original mood of passages should be translated. He illustrates the need to identify honor/shame passages and to translate them accordingly. He appeals to translators to avoid as much as possible insider vocabulary, including many of the specialized Thai divine/royal terms.

Yancy Smith

The Mystery and Mirage of Equivalence: Bible Translation Theory and the Practice of Christian Mission

Since the era of Eugene Nida, evangelical Bible translation has been revolutionized by his notion of dynamic or functional equivalence. Powerful theological and theoretical concerns, however, call into question its usefulness and its catholicity. This article explores and questions the usefulness of the equivalence model of translation in Christian mission from the standpoint of incarnation.

Andy Johnson

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Missional Hermeneutics Lived Out in Burkinabe Villages

James Thompson and Tommy Givens

NT Scholars Discuss Missional Hermeneutics

This discussion was originally an email exchange moderated by the editor.

Mission Frontiers 36, 1 (January-February 2014)

The January-February 2014 issue of Mission Frontiers, published by the U.S. Center for World Mission, contains a number of articles under the heading ‘Breaking the Silence’, looking at how God is ‘reaching a different kind of ethnolinguistic people group with his Word: the deaf’.

‘There are between 120-400 sign languages in the world and none of them has the complete Bible in its language. In addition to having the Bible there is a need for outreach focused on the deaf and who better to do so than those who are deaf themselves. As a bonus in this issue, most of the featured articles have a ASL video translation.’

Individual articles can be accessed from here, and the whole issue (7 MB) can be downloaded as a pdf here.

Bible Storying Course

Further to my previous post on the power of story, and prompted by Eddie Arthur, readers of this blog may be interested to know of a six-day intensive course on Bible Storying taking place in November this year at Redcliffe College. The course is part of Redcliffe’s Centre for Linguistics, Translation and Literacy and is taught in partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators and SIL.

Meanwhile, check out this list of resources on the Bible and orality.

Orality Journal

The first edition of Orality Journal, published online by the International Orality Network, is available as a 7.8 MB pdf document here, and includes a number of articles on Bible storying and telling Bible stories in specific contexts.

Here’s the official blurb:

‘Orality Journal is the journal of the International Orality Network. It is published online semi-annually and aims to provide a platform for scholarly discourse on the issues of orality, discoveries of innovations in orality, and praxis of effictiveness across multiple domains in society. This online journal is international and interdisciplinary, serving the interests of the orality movement through research articles, documentation, book reviews, and academic news. Occasionally, print editions will be created. Submission of items that could contribute to the furtherance of the orality movement are welcomed.’

Anvil 27, 3 (2011) on Bible Translation

Some contents of the latest issue of Anvil are now available online (after a pain-free registration process), with essays on translating the Bible, with special reference to the 400th anniversary of the King James’ Version.

N.T. Wright

The Monarchs and the Message: Reflections on Bible Translation from the Sixteenth to the Twenty-First Century

In this article, Tom Wright, whose own translation of the New Testament was published in 2011, highlights the importance of translation within Christian faith as the message of the universal kingship of the Jewish messiah is communicated to the nations. Exploring the translations of the Reformation era, he sets Tyndale’s translation and the King James Version in their contrasting political contexts before explaining the significance of the word ‘Christ’ and the issues it raises today both for translators wishing to be faithful to the New Testament message and Christians seeking to live out Jesus’ radical definition of ‘lordship’. He concludes, drawing on his own experience, with reflections upon some of the other challenges facing translators today – such as the inevitability of distortion and the tensions that can arise between accuracy of word and tone or flavour – as they seek to convey the Bible’s message to contemporary readers and rulers.

Graham Tomlin

The King James Version and Luther’s Bible Translation

Graham Tomlin here examines perhaps two of the most influential Reformation texts: Martin Luther’s translation of the Bible (1534) and the King James Version (1611). He shows how their different emphases reflect different strands in tension within the Reformation as well as their different historical contexts. For Luther, translation should be idiomatic and so accessible, theological and the work of a faithful translator who has been humbled by God’s grace. His is a translation of immanence and incarnation into his culture. In contrast, the KJV is not concerned to propound a particular theological standpoint but seeks simplicity and the integrity of precise translation of the original languages. It thus preserves the Scripture’s strangeness and trusts the reader with the text’s uncertainties.

Lamin Sanneh

Bible Translation and Human Dignity

In this article, Lamin Sanneh explores the revolutionary impact, in various contexts, of translating Scripture into people’s mother tongue. He shows this significant religious, social and cultural event is an expression of Christianity as a translated religion which empowers those who receive the translation and affirms their human dignity. These findings are illustrated from history and more recent mission experience in Kenya, West Africa and Zululand and a sketch is offered of the spread of Bible translation and the social and cultural renewal that has followed.

David Lyle Jeffrey on Bible Translations and the Loss of Transcendence

David Lyle Jeffrey, ‘Our Babel of Bibles: Scripture, Tradition and the Possibility of Spiritual Understanding’, Touchstone 25, 2 (March/April 2012).

The March/April 2012 edition of Touchstone allows online access to a typically well-written and sparky essay by David Lyle Jeffrey. The opening paragraph provides a kind of summary of the burden of his piece:

‘From the perspective of one who values freedom of choice, individualism, and the market, the proliferation of new translations and paraphrases of the Bible must seem, on the whole, a good thing. From a perspective that places a greater value on theological probity, spiritual understanding in the laity, and coherence in the witness of the Church, however, the plethora of English translations and the Babel-like confusion of tongues they create is arguably a calamity. While every new translation is evidently a “market opportunity” and may express in some way the particular slant or voice of individual denominations on certain doctrines, the dissonance and “white noise” of competing Bibles tends to confuse rather than clarify discussion across denominational boundaries. In fact, the “Babel effect” intensifies the confusion.’

In the proliferation of contemporary translations, not to mention the many niche editions of the Bible now available (I stumbled across a forthcoming ‘Curious Kittens Bible’ the other day), Jeffrey detects what he calls ‘a symptom of an increasingly materialist rather than spiritual understanding of Scripture itself’.

‘These efforts, even if they leave the canon intact, are a species of immanentizing, in the name of “humanizing,” biblical language, effectively making the reader the primary locus of meaning rather than Scripture itself.’

He seeks to support this with a number of examples, some (I think) more telling than others, in what amounts to a stimulating essay.

John D. Woodbridge on the King James Bible

An essay by John Woodbridge, available here, was given as an address at the King James Version Festival, hosted by the R.C. Ryan Center for Biblical Studies at Union University, in September 2011 It will also appear, along with other papers from the event, in Ray Van Neste (ed.), KJV400: Legacy and Impact (Borderstone Press, forthcoming 2012).

Woodbridge sets something of the historical background to the translation, noting that ‘it was created in a context of genuine turmoil for many Europeans’.

But in line with a number of his own published concerns, he focuses particularly on the specific beliefs of the translators regarding biblical authority, arguing that ‘their understanding of Scriptural authority remained within the central Augustinian tradition of the Western Christian churches’.

The struggle over biblical authority between Roman Catholics and Protestants, he avers, is revealed in the writings of the William Whitaker (1547-95), master of St. John’s College, Cambridge University, who was an Anglican and a Reformed theologian.

In his A Disputation on Holy Scripture (1958), Whitaker identified certain significant traits as constituent elements of his doctrine of Scriptural authority: (1) that Scripture is completely truthful (in line with what Whitaker believed was the central teaching of the western churches); (2) that Scripture’s principal author is God, the Holy Spirit; (3) that Scripture is an infallible rule of faith and practice (in that it contains sufficiently all we need to know about salvation); (4) that Scripture’s original texts were inspired of God (the Greek and Hebrew originals as opposed to, say, the Latin Vulgate); (5) that vernacular translations of the Bible are authoritative to the extent they faithfully reflect the Hebrew and Greek originals inspired by the Holy Spirit.

Woodbridge maintains that ‘the translators shared many of the same perspectives as those of William Whitaker’, showing that they too affirmed the full truthfulness of Scripture, that its principal author was the Holy Spirit, etc.

He ends the essay with a personal note:

‘Personally, one of the great joys in having pursued this study of the translators’ views of biblical authority was to encounter their closing counsel to their readers regarding their love of the Word of God. Their preface ends in an exposition of their heartfelt desire that readers of their translation would love the Word of God. Their comments are genuinely inspirational. Hopefully, they will lead us to treasure God’s Word even more than we may presently do.’