Everything you know about the Gospel of Paul is likely wrong

From Aeon-

This past year, I burdened the English-speaking world with my very own translation of the New Testament – a project that I undertook at the behest of my editor at Yale University Press, but that I agreed to almost in the instant that it was proposed. I had long contemplated attempting a ‘subversively literal’ rendering of the text. Over the years, I had become disenchanted with almost all the standard translations available, and especially with modern versions produced by large committees of scholars, many of whom (it seems to me) have been predisposed by inherited theological habits to see things in the text that are not really there, and to fail to notice other things that most definitely are. Committees are bland affairs, and tend to reinforce our expectations; but the world of late antiquity is so remote from our own that it is almost never what we expect.

Ask, for instance, the average American Christian – say, some genial Presbyterian who attends church regularly and owns a New International Version of the Bible – what gospel the Apostle Paul preached. The reply will fall along predictable lines: human beings, bearing the guilt of original sin and destined for eternal hell, cannot save themselves through good deeds, or make themselves acceptable to God; yet God, in his mercy, sent the eternal Son to offer himself up for our sins, and the righteousness of Christ has been graciously imputed or imparted to all who have faith.

More here-

https://aeon.co/ideas/the-gospels-of-paul-dont-say-what-you-think-they-say

A Mind-Bending Translation of the New Testament

From Atlantic Monthly-

In the beginning was … well, what? A clap of the divine hands and a poetic shock wave? Or an itchy node of nothingness inconceivably scratching itself into somethingness? In the beginning was the Word, says the Gospel according to John—a lovely statement of the case, as it’s always seemed to me. A pre-temporal syllable swelling to utterance in the mouth of the universe, spoken once and heard forever: God’s power chord, if you like. For David Bentley Hart, however, whose mind-bending translation of the New Testament was published in October, the Word—as a word—does not suffice: He finds it to be “a curiously bland and impenetrable designation” for the heady concept expressed in the original Greek of the Gospels as Logos. The Chinese word Tao might get at it, Hart tells us, but English has nothing with quite the metaphysical flavor of Logos, the particular sense of a formative moral energy diffusing itself, without diminution, through space and time. So he throws up his hands and leaves it where it is: “In the origin there was the Logos …”

More here-

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/the-new-testament-a-translation-david-bentley-hart/546551/?utm_source=atlfb

THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO DAVID BENTLEY HART

From First Things-

David Bentley Hart’s new single-handed translation of the New Testament will strike the fair-minded reader by turns as startling, incisive, audacious, smug, shrewd, and quirky to the point of exasperation: everything, in short, the author intended it to be. The book sets out to be provocative and succeeds. A philosopher, theologian, scholar of patristics and mythology, and frequent contributor to First Things, Hart maintains that his dissatisfaction with the standard renderings of the Bible—each the product of committees and therefore of numberless harmful compromises—convinced him of the value of starting from scratch and making a one-man job of it.

The work consists of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, transmitted in what Hart calls his “almost pitilessly literal” translation. Framing the translation itself are a lengthy introduction and a “Concluding Scientific Postscript,” written with the lucidity and cheery truculence characteristic of Hart’s essays. In these sections he sets out the purposes of his project, explains his strategy of translation, declares independence from a priori doctrinal and theological constraints, and provides a discussion of his more controversial renderings of key words that, somewhat paradoxically, amounts to an original theology of the New Testament in miniature.

More here-

https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/11/the-gospel-according-to-david-bentley

Tyndale's Betrayal and Death

From Christianity Today-

By 1535, several englishmen had been or were engaged in the hunt for William Tyndale, under orders either from King Henry VIII, Sir Thomas More, or Bishop John Stokesley of London. These agents were hunting all over Europe, but only one of them actually succeeded in ferreting out the elusive Tyndale and bringing about his demise: a devious ne’er-do-well named Henry (or Harry) Phillips.

Henry Phillips arrived in Antwerp during the early summer of 1535. He came from a wealthy and therefore notable English family, and his father, Richard, had been three times a member of parliament and twice high sheriff. In addition, Richard Phillips held the lucrative post of Comptroller of the Customs in Poole Harbor.

Henry Phillips was the third and last son in the family, and in 1533 he registered at Oxford for a degree in civil law. And being a man of some ability, he was apparently well-set to gain a good position and follow a respectable life.


More here-


http://www.christianitytoday.com/history/issues/issue-16/tyndales-betrayal-and-death.html

Interpreting the Bible Just Got More Complicated

From The Daily Beast-

In October 2012, Dr. Lukas Dorfbauer, a researcher at the University of Salzburg, was examining the manuscripts of the Cologne Cathedral Library. He was looking at an anonymous manuscript and realized that this ancient text contained the earliest Latin commentary on the Gospels. Dorfbauer was not the first scholar to examine the manuscript, but he was the first to realize its significance: Here, as part of the 100-page fourth century c.e. commentary, was the earliest Latin translation of the Gospels. And now, it’s available in English—and the implications are enormous.

The author of the commentary was Fortunatianus of Aquileia, a fourth-century North African who later became a northern Italian bishop. Scholars had known about the commentary from references to it in other ancient works, but until Dorfbauer identified the Cologne manuscript it had been lost for more than 1,500 years.

When scholars had looked at this turn-of-the-ninth century manuscript in the past, they had been much more interested in a forged letter “on Pride and Folly” that claimed to be from the Jewish high priest Annas to the famous Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca. To be sure, forged letters between Seneca and Christian religious figures are fascinating (there’s a set of letters between the Apostle Paul and Seneca, as well), but they are of little consequence next to the earliest extant Latin translation of the Bible.

More here-

http://www.thedailybeast.com/interpreting-the-bible-just-got-more-complicated

Are Most Christians Today Not Really Christians?

From Intellectual Take Out-

Thomas Jefferson was a deist that believed the ultimate value of Christianity was in its ethical teachings.

So he famously created his own Bible by literally cutting and pasting passages from the Gospels that agreed with his doctrine and omitting those passages (such as the miracles and mentions of the supernatural) that conflicted with it.

The creation of Jefferson’s Bible has become something of an archetype of a perennial tendency for Christians to project their own images on to their professed religious faith; to interpret the Christian message as remarkably aligned with their own personal preferences and lifestyle choices.

This point was recently brought home to David Bentley Hart—regarded as one of the greatest religious scholars and English prose stylists today—as he was working on a translation of the New Testament for Yale University Press (which is due out in October).


More here-

http://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/are-most-christians-today-not-really-christians

Catholics get 'The Message' in new edition of Bible

From National Catholic Reporter-

While looking at the readings on the fifth Sunday of Lent as I prepared for our weekly Scripture discussion group, I started with the selection from Paul's Epistle to the Romans. Here's what I read: "Those who are in the flesh cannot please God. But you are not in the flesh; on the contrary you are in the spirit, if only the Spirit of God dwells in you. Whoever does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him ... "

Here we go again, I thought. We'll be trying to decipher what spirit and flesh really mean in this context, etc., etc. So I picked up The Message, a relatively new translation of the Bible I had received, and I read the same verses from Paul: "Focusing on the self is the opposite of focusing on God. Anyone completely absorbed in self ignores God and what he is doing. And God isn't pleased at being ignored ... "

Wham! It was so clear, as if Paul himself had rung the doorbell, come in, pinned me against the wall and said, "Time to get your act together, my brother in Christ." And he wasn't smiling. Our group listened to both versions of Romans at our meeting a few days later, and there was unanimous agreement that The Message carried Paul's message in a sensible, powerful, personal new way.

More here-

http://ncronline.org/news/faith-parish/catholics-get-message-new-edition-bible#.U9PryTcuFQ8.twitter

The Most Popular and Fastest Growing Bible Translation Isn't What You Think It Is

From Christianity Today-

When Americans reach for their Bibles, more than half of them pick up a King James Version (KJV), according to a new study advised by respected historian Mark Noll.

The 55 percent who read the KJV easily outnumber the 19 percent who read the New International Version (NIV). And the percentages drop into the single digits for competitors such as the New Revised Standard Version, New America Bible, and the Living Bible.

So concludes "The Bible in American Life," a lengthy report by the Center for the Study of Religion and American Culture at Indiana University–Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Funded by the Lilly Foundation, researchers asked questions on what David Briggs of the ARDA, which first reported the results, calls "two of the most highly respected data sources for American religion"—the General Social Survey and the National Congregations Study.

The numbers are surprising, given the strong sales of NIV translations in bookstores. The NIV has topped the CBA's bestselling Bible translation list for decades, and continued to sell robustly in 2013.

More here-

http://www.christianitytoday.com/gleanings/2014/march/most-popular-and-fastest-growing-bible-translation-niv-kjv.html

The Inuit-language bible it took 34 years to translate is now available as an app

From National Post-

An Inuit-language bible that took 34 years to translate is now available as an app.

Last week, an Inuktitut option was added to a free bible app published by YouVersion.com, the online publishing arm of an Oklahoma-based megachurch.

The text comes from a three-decade long collaboration between the Anglican Church and the Canadian Bible Society to translate both testaments into Eastern Arctic Inuktitut.

“We’re happy to have this out of the way,” Rev. Canon Jonas Allooloo, who was with the translation team since its 1978 inception, told the Post at the time. “It’s been 34 years and we can do something else now.”

Dedicated just last June in Iqaluit, the Inuktitut bible was prepared by a small team of Inuit translators who painstakingly bridged the many linguistic gaps between millennia-old Middle Eastern texts and a language developed by Arctic-dwelling hunter-gatherers.

http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/04/01/the-inuit-language-bible-it-took-34-years-to-translate-is-now-available-as-an-app/

William Shakespeare: His role as a King James Bible translator

From The Washington Times-

It would seem unlikely that a man who wrote Romeo and Juliet, Measure for measure, Twelfth Night, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Macbeth, Othello, and Richard II would be ignored by the translation committee to participate in the translation of the King’s Bible.

He was at the apex of his writing acumen in 1604 when the KJV was initiated.

An interesting story involving Shakespeare (1564-1616) as a possible translator of Psalm 46 has become a part of historical lore.

If you count in the KJV 46 words from the beginning, you arrive at the word shake in the phrase, “the mountains shake.” If you count 46 words from the end backwards you arrive at the word speare” in the phrase, “cutteth the speare in sunder.”

Shakespeare was baptized in 1564 (birth date unknown) this would make him about 46 years old, if baptized as an infant, when the KJV was published. Does this invite the imagination to surmise that William Shakespeare the greatest writer in English literature translated some of the Psalms?

More here-

http://communities.washingtontimes.com/neighborhood/worlds-best-selling-book/2011/jul/16/william-shakespeare-his-role-king-james-bible-tran/

Gwich'in New Testament finished

From Alaska-

The gold-lettered title of the plain-covered book reads "Vit'eegwijyahchy'aa: Vagwandak Nizii," Gwich'in for, "God: His Good News."

"Remember the words of our Lord are blessed to give and to receive," said St. Matthew's rector, the Rev. Scott Fisher, following the announcement Sunday that the translation of the New Testament to the Gwich'in Athabascan language is available.

The service was a joyous occasion for the diverse congregation. There was an adult Baptism and more than a dozen parishioners were confirmed by Alaska Episcopal Bishop Mark Lattime.

The final highlight was the introduction of the second team of Wycliffe volunteers, Meggie and Pierre DeMers of Healy, who spent 31 years completing the Gwich'in translation of the New Testament.

Parishioners responded with a standing ovation for the couple.

Read more:

http://www.adn.com/2011/06/12/1912979/gwichin-new-testament-finished.html#ixzz1PA7BhhTv

Healy couple translates New Testament to Gwich’in language Read more: Fairbanks Daily News-Miner - Healy couple translates New Testament to Gwich’in

From Alaska-

The gold-lettered title of the plain-covered book reads “Vit’eegwijyahchy’aa: Vagwandak Nizii,” Gwich’in for, “God: His Good News.”

“Remember the words of our Lord are blessed to give and to receive,” said St. Matthew’s rector, the Rev. Scott Fisher, following the announcement Sunday that the translation of the New Testament to the Gwich’in Athabascan language is available.

The 11 a.m. service was a joyous occasion for the diverse congregation. There was an adult Baptism and more than a dozen parishioners were confirmed by Alaska Episcopal Bishop Mark Lattime.

The final highlight was the introduction of the second team of Wycliffe volunteers, Meggie and Pierre DeMers of Healy, who spent 31 years completing the Gwich’in translation of the New Testament.

Parishioners responded with a standing ovation for the couple.

The Bible, both Old and New testaments were translated in the latter half of the 1800s by Church of England missionary Archdeacon Robert McDonald. He was the first to put Gwich’in in written form that is no longer used today.

Read more:

http://newsminer.com/view/full_story/13370772/article-Healy-couple-translates-New-Testament-to-Gwich’in-language?instance=home_news_window_left_top_4

King James Version of Bible turns 400 Monday

From Georgia-

Canaan Baptist Church sits in a storefront off Mike Padgett Highway. There's no pulpit or stained glass in the small, independent Baptist church. Its pastor, the Rev. Mike Andrews, speaks plainly.

That is, except when he preaches.
On Sundays, Andrews teaches from the King James Version of the Bible. He'll read lengthy, eloquent passages of Elizabethan verse, largely unchanged since their publication four centuries ago.

On Monday, the world celebrates the 400th anniversary of that Bible, revered not only as a religious work but also as a literary masterpiece that has shaped language, culture and politics.
To some, the King James Version remains beautiful, poetic and powerful, the only version worthy of reading aloud. To others, it's inaccessible, stodgy and outdated.

Andrews says he falls squarely in the first camp.

"It's the only thing we use. We believe that it's the word of God for English-speaking people," he said, adding with a laugh: "We're old sticks-in-the-mud like that."

More here-

http://chronicle.augusta.com/news/metro/2011-04-30/king-james-version-bible-turns-400-monday?v=1304228836

In New Year message, Archbishop of Canterbury addresses impact of King James Bible

From ENS-

Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams has celebrated the impact of the King James Bible since its publication 400 years ago.

"When we try to make sense of our lives and of who we really are, it helps to have a strongly defined story, a big picture of some kind in the background," said Williams, in his annual New Year message, recorded for the BBC. "As the King James Bible took hold of the imaginations of millions of people in the English-speaking world, it gave them just that -- a big picture, a story in which their lives made sense."

The Authorized King James Version is an English translation of the Bible begun in 1604 and published in 1611. James I, who instructed the translation, was king of England at the time.

"Things move on but it's good for us to have some long-lasting furniture in our minds, words and images that have something a bit mysterious about them and that carry important experiences for us that we can't find words of our own for," Williams said.

The archbishop underscores that some kind of "big picture" matters for people to make sense of their lives, regardless of their beliefs. "This year's anniversary is a chance to stop and think about the big picture -- and to celebrate the astonishing contribution made by that book four hundred years ago," he said.

The full text of the Archbishop's message follows.

http://www.episcopal-life.org/79425_126362_ENG_HTM.htm

How The King James Bible 'Begat' English Idioms

From NPR-

In Begat, David Crystal sets out to prove that the King James Bible has contributed more to the English language than any other literary source.

If you've ever "fought the good fight" or chuckled at "what comes out of the mouths of babes," you just might agree with him.

Phrases with roots in the King James Bible are everywhere. Crystal tells NPR's Neal Conan that writing Begat began with his curiosity about a simple question: How many English language idioms come from the King James Bible? When Crystal posed this question to people, they guessed a wide range of answers — anywhere from 50 to 1,000. So he decided he'd better read the Bible and figure it out.

"I went through it and looked for every instance of an expression that I thought was current in modern English," Crystal says. "And then I thought: I'd better read it again, just to make sure I haven't missed any." And after that second reading, he had a figure.

More here-

http://www.npr.org/2010/12/22/132262167/thank-the-king-james-bible-for-favorite-phrases?sc=ipad&f=1008

Beer worked wonders for biblical heroes, new translation concludes

From The Church Times-

ANCIENT Israelites drank beer as well as wine, and the brew was even acceptable as an offering to God, a biblical scholar has argued.

The Associate Professor of Theology at the Roman Catholic Xavier University in Louisi ana, Michael Homan, believes that the Hebrew word shekhar has been mistranslated in English Bibles to mean liquor or strong drink, when it should be translated as beer.

He said that the mistranslation was clue in part to academic snob bishness, which led scholars to scorn beer drinkers but celebrate the wine-drinking culture.

In an article in the current issue of the Biblical Archaeology Review, Professor Homan writes: “This has led many Bible scholars actively to distance biblical heroes from a beer drinking world, much like some Christians prefer to believe that Jesus drank unfermented grape juice despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.”

The difficulty of finding archaeological evidence of beer drinking — owing to the fact that most of the tools used were also used in bread-making, and that beer was drunk fresh and not stored — had meant that the amount of beer drinking in Israeli society had been under estimated.

“Ancient Israelites, with the possible exception of a few teetotal ling Nazirites and their moms, proudly drank beer — and lots of it . . . all social classes drank it. Its con sumption in ancient Israel was en­couraged, sanctioned and inti ately linked with their religion,” he argues.

Unlike today’s brews, ancient beers did not include hops, but were made from creating a barley “cake”, which was placed in water, to which yeast was added, causing fermentation.

More here-

http://www.churchtimes.co.uk/content.asp?id=101436