Apparently there's to be yet another retranslation of the New International Version. It's been noted in various places: Clayboy, Peter Kirk, Church Mouse etc.
This follows the updating of the NIV with 'Todays New International Version' a few years ago, which will be taken off the market in 2011 when the new one comes out. (It will then be rebranded 'Yesterdays New International Version'.) TNIV's main difference from the original is the use of 'inclusive language' (i.e. not saying 'men' when you mean 'men and women', etc.)
Thoughts.
1. I agree with Eddie Arthur: yet another translation of the Bible in English, when there are still 2000 languages which don't have their own translation.
2. This seems like a collossal waste of paper. Unless the translators are going to junk large parts of the text (which seems unlikely) the amendments are likely to be fairly minor. As a result of a few changes of words here and there, does the whole thing need to be reprinted? (with, of course, the marketing variations: Youth NNIV, Womens NNIV, Bus Drivers NNIV, NNIV for backsliders, etc.)
3. The rebranding possibilities may be even more controversial than the contents. Possibilities so far:
- Tomorrows New International Version (TNIV, not to be confused with TNIV)
- Newer International Version (NIV, not to be confused with NIV)
- Very New International Version (VNIV, which is starting to look like a Roman date)
- Brand New International Version (BNIV, which ceases to be true as soon as you've bought it, and so risks making a complete liar out of everyone who owns a copy)
- New International Version 3.0, which can be released in digital form and updated by download whenever a new bit of translation becomes available.
- 21st Century NIV: bit of a hostage to fortune, as you then can't amend it again for 89 years. Actually '21st century' already sounds dated.
3. My suggestion: if this enterprise really needs to happen, then publish the changes in a leaflet. People can then get the leaflet (or view it online) and go to their own bibles with a pencil, and make the necessary amendments. It strikes me this has several advantages
- it saves trees, energy, transport etc.
- it saves money
- it will get lots of NIV-owners reading their Bibles, and who knows, they may actually come across something they'd not read before, and be really blessed by it.
Update: Peter Kirk points out that the NIV dedicate some of their revenue to funding bible translation, and supports the retranslation project. However, thought it's slightly tongue-in-cheek, I still think my suggestion (3) has some merit. Peter argues that many translations of the Bible into new languages are based on the English. In the internet age, if there was a Biblepedia where the best English translation of a passage, new manuscript finds, etc. could be posted, then this could be up to date at whatever point a translator wanted to use it, instead of having to wait 25+ years for an update of the latest NIV.
Also worth noting that the NIV isn't the only translation on the market, and there are new 'up to date' English translations appearing every 2-3 years or so.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
Mistaken ideas atheists have about Christians
In the interests of constructive debate, I'm working with Steve Borthwick on some cross-posts to help atheists and Christians understand each other better, so that we can do slightly better than taking the mickey out of each other. We'd both like to address the misconceptions that 'the other side' have about atheists/Christians.
I asked my Twitter crowd for 'things Christians would like atheists to know' and have had the following responses so far:
"we don't check our brains in at the door when we meet together as church"
"The vast majority of us are not biblical literalists or creationists"
"we share as many doubts and as much faith as each other"
"That we're not all brainwashed, right-wing anti-Darwinian idiots. Oh, and some of us used to be militant atheists too."
"we use our brains. We like stuff like science & art too. We're not closed shop we try best to love even those we disagree with."
there's a common thread emerging here....
Please add your own in the comments or via Twitter.
The responses will help me put a post together for Steve's blog, and he'll be posting here to give my (mainly Christian) readership a better handle on atheism. But start here if you can't wait until then, excellent post.
(by sheer coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing, Slipstream is focusing on the 'new atheism' this month, with various book extracts to read, and an interview with Peter Williams, author of 'A Sceptics Guide to Atheism.
See also this on Maggi Dawn, which is partly the reason I'm doing the cross post. Not all atheists are 'new atheists' and not all Christians are creationists)
I asked my Twitter crowd for 'things Christians would like atheists to know' and have had the following responses so far:
"we don't check our brains in at the door when we meet together as church"
"The vast majority of us are not biblical literalists or creationists"
"we share as many doubts and as much faith as each other"
"That we're not all brainwashed, right-wing anti-Darwinian idiots. Oh, and some of us used to be militant atheists too."
"we use our brains. We like stuff like science & art too. We're not closed shop we try best to love even those we disagree with."
there's a common thread emerging here....
Please add your own in the comments or via Twitter.
The responses will help me put a post together for Steve's blog, and he'll be posting here to give my (mainly Christian) readership a better handle on atheism. But start here if you can't wait until then, excellent post.
(by sheer coincidence, if you believe in that sort of thing, Slipstream is focusing on the 'new atheism' this month, with various book extracts to read, and an interview with Peter Williams, author of 'A Sceptics Guide to Atheism.
See also this on Maggi Dawn, which is partly the reason I'm doing the cross post. Not all atheists are 'new atheists' and not all Christians are creationists)
Wednesday, September 02, 2009
List-tastic
If you're a fan of lists, then here are a few:
Peter Ould has the latest Alexa-based rankings for Anglican blogs. The bloggers at Greenbelt I spoke to seemed to think that Alexa doesn't really work for UK blogs, compared to US ones. But as long as I'm going up in the rankings I won't complain.....
If you like your lists comprehensive, one site attempts a Grand Unified Theory of blogging, compiling a ranking from Alexa, Technorati, Google, site feeds and several other measures. The 'top site' on this basis is Between Two Worlds.
Iain Dale has various lists going on, mostly from Total Politics:
- Nominations for the most influential people on the 'left' and 'right' and Libdem. I'd quite like to see a list for people who gain influence without having to sign up to a political pigeonhole.
- top 75 Libdem blogs
- top 100 Conservative blogs
- top 100 right of centre blogs (why does the right need two lists? that's greedy, but then that's capitalism for you)
- top 100 left blogs announced this morning, congrats to Tom Harris.
- top Green blogs
Wikio top religious blogs will be here once a) the full list gets published for August and b) I can find time to trawl through them.
Church Mouse has an entirely different list, a Green ranking of consumer products. Hooray for Persil, boo for Haribo gums.
Update: top list of the day is 'The 10 worst verses in the Bible', which is pretty much everywhere: here, here , here, here, and here. If that sort of negativity gets you down, then join the Bible group on Facebook, currently 370,000 members and rising, one of the fastest growing pages on FB.
Peter Ould has the latest Alexa-based rankings for Anglican blogs. The bloggers at Greenbelt I spoke to seemed to think that Alexa doesn't really work for UK blogs, compared to US ones. But as long as I'm going up in the rankings I won't complain.....
If you like your lists comprehensive, one site attempts a Grand Unified Theory of blogging, compiling a ranking from Alexa, Technorati, Google, site feeds and several other measures. The 'top site' on this basis is Between Two Worlds.
Iain Dale has various lists going on, mostly from Total Politics:
- Nominations for the most influential people on the 'left' and 'right' and Libdem. I'd quite like to see a list for people who gain influence without having to sign up to a political pigeonhole.
- top 75 Libdem blogs
- top 100 Conservative blogs
- top 100 right of centre blogs (why does the right need two lists? that's greedy, but then that's capitalism for you)
- top 100 left blogs announced this morning, congrats to Tom Harris.
- top Green blogs
Wikio top religious blogs will be here once a) the full list gets published for August and b) I can find time to trawl through them.
Church Mouse has an entirely different list, a Green ranking of consumer products. Hooray for Persil, boo for Haribo gums.
Update: top list of the day is 'The 10 worst verses in the Bible', which is pretty much everywhere: here, here , here, here, and here. If that sort of negativity gets you down, then join the Bible group on Facebook, currently 370,000 members and rising, one of the fastest growing pages on FB.
The Unwritten Rules of Worship
At some point in the next few months, roughly 50% of our Anglican churches will be vicarless. Out of the 8 parishes in the Deanery (Yeovil and surrounding villages), 1 vicar has retired, and 3 more are dunblessin' by Easter next year.
I helped out at one of these churches on Sunday. One of the pitfalls of leading worship at a church you don't know is that there can be a hundred little ways to get it wrong. Everything from wearing the wrong stuff, to standing in the wrong place, to sharing the Peace in the wrong way. And now of course, with swine flu', there's local variations on which bits of communion people will still imbibe. Thankfully East Chinnock were pretty relaxed about most of the above.
The passage was God's gift (literally) - Mark 7. Jesus has spent most of Mark 6 doing some amazing stuff - feeding the 5000, healing people, walking on water, stilling a storm etc. He's suddenly joined by a group of Pharisees up from Jerusalem to check him out.
If you had the chance to talk to Jesus, after all of that, what would you ask? The chances are that it wouldn't be "why don't you're followers wash their hands?" This is a point-missing event of Biblical proportions. Jesus has blown wide open God's channels of grace and power, but the Pharisees want to know why he doesn't use their brand of soap.
Before we feel too superior to the Pharisees, don't forget: THIS IS MOST PEOPLE'S EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCH. If they don't come to church, they encounter us through rules about who can get married/baptised where, or the church coming out (as it were) with a moral line on gay clergy. When they do come along for the first time on a Sunday morning, what thoughts are uppermost: 'where should I sit?' 'are my children making too much noise?' 'if I don't know the songs will I look stupid?' 'why is everyone standing up and sitting down?' 'what am I supposed to do with this bit of paper?' Their first experience is of rules, codes of behaviour.
Isn't this tragic? Jesus came into the world so that we could encounter God through him, but often the first thing that people encounter when they come into contact with the church is the rules. I remember a schoolteacher of mine saying that, as a youth, he'd stood up at the wrong point in a church service and everyone had stared at him. He felt so embarassed he'd never gone back to church.
How many other people share that experience? How many folk have that experience, even if we're trying to be friendly and relaxed? Most of our churches don't want to give the impression that the petty 'rules' are the important things, but like it or not, they are one of the first things that visitors will come across.
and I wonder..... is this, again, one of the problems with church as 'event' rather than church as 'community'? Yes communities have rules, but because they're expressions of relationship, the rules come with soft edges, and not all in a cluster. They can also be discussed and explained when they're encountered, something which isn't really possible in a church service!
It would be an interesting experience to sit through a church service and count how many written and unwritten codes of behaviour are followed in the course of an hour, from the standard 'prayer position', to how loudly you sing, to whether it's permissible to laugh. Given that all of that is being processed by a newcomer, is it possible for them to encounter God at the same time?
But yes, I did wash my hands before doing the communion prayer. Some rules are quite helpful, though common sense would do just as well.
I helped out at one of these churches on Sunday. One of the pitfalls of leading worship at a church you don't know is that there can be a hundred little ways to get it wrong. Everything from wearing the wrong stuff, to standing in the wrong place, to sharing the Peace in the wrong way. And now of course, with swine flu', there's local variations on which bits of communion people will still imbibe. Thankfully East Chinnock were pretty relaxed about most of the above.
The passage was God's gift (literally) - Mark 7. Jesus has spent most of Mark 6 doing some amazing stuff - feeding the 5000, healing people, walking on water, stilling a storm etc. He's suddenly joined by a group of Pharisees up from Jerusalem to check him out.
If you had the chance to talk to Jesus, after all of that, what would you ask? The chances are that it wouldn't be "why don't you're followers wash their hands?" This is a point-missing event of Biblical proportions. Jesus has blown wide open God's channels of grace and power, but the Pharisees want to know why he doesn't use their brand of soap.
Before we feel too superior to the Pharisees, don't forget: THIS IS MOST PEOPLE'S EXPERIENCE OF THE CHURCH. If they don't come to church, they encounter us through rules about who can get married/baptised where, or the church coming out (as it were) with a moral line on gay clergy. When they do come along for the first time on a Sunday morning, what thoughts are uppermost: 'where should I sit?' 'are my children making too much noise?' 'if I don't know the songs will I look stupid?' 'why is everyone standing up and sitting down?' 'what am I supposed to do with this bit of paper?' Their first experience is of rules, codes of behaviour.
Isn't this tragic? Jesus came into the world so that we could encounter God through him, but often the first thing that people encounter when they come into contact with the church is the rules. I remember a schoolteacher of mine saying that, as a youth, he'd stood up at the wrong point in a church service and everyone had stared at him. He felt so embarassed he'd never gone back to church.
How many other people share that experience? How many folk have that experience, even if we're trying to be friendly and relaxed? Most of our churches don't want to give the impression that the petty 'rules' are the important things, but like it or not, they are one of the first things that visitors will come across.
and I wonder..... is this, again, one of the problems with church as 'event' rather than church as 'community'? Yes communities have rules, but because they're expressions of relationship, the rules come with soft edges, and not all in a cluster. They can also be discussed and explained when they're encountered, something which isn't really possible in a church service!
It would be an interesting experience to sit through a church service and count how many written and unwritten codes of behaviour are followed in the course of an hour, from the standard 'prayer position', to how loudly you sing, to whether it's permissible to laugh. Given that all of that is being processed by a newcomer, is it possible for them to encounter God at the same time?
But yes, I did wash my hands before doing the communion prayer. Some rules are quite helpful, though common sense would do just as well.
Tuesday, September 01, 2009
Your humble blogger sets the 5live agenda.
This morning Simon Mayo used Twitter to ask for questions for the new BBC head of sport, Barbara Slater. I sent in the following:
question for Barbara Slater "will the BBC try to get the Ashes coverage back in time for the next series, and if not why not?"
It was the first up on the programme, and got a 2 1/2 minute answer: the section starts about 1:39:45 in on this link. Mayo himself followed it up with several supplementaries. The answer is going in the right direction, but I wasn't happy with the fact she wouldn't commit herself to securing the Ashes for free TV. Anyway, it set the agenda for the first 6 minutes or so of the interview, so three cheers for Twitter.
She agreed with the point I've made elsewhere that the viewing figures for the ashes were dismal, compared to when it was free to air. But kept couching it in terms of choices between competing sports. I guess that's fair enough, but it's also a choice between sports and other stuff.
It sets me wondering about using Twitter though: it'd be an interesting way to organise our preaching. More people listen to phone-ins and live interviews than straight lectures, so if our teaching/reflection was more this style, would more people engage with (and contribute to) it?
Meanwhile Lets have the next Ashes on free TV!
question for Barbara Slater "will the BBC try to get the Ashes coverage back in time for the next series, and if not why not?"
It was the first up on the programme, and got a 2 1/2 minute answer: the section starts about 1:39:45 in on this link. Mayo himself followed it up with several supplementaries. The answer is going in the right direction, but I wasn't happy with the fact she wouldn't commit herself to securing the Ashes for free TV. Anyway, it set the agenda for the first 6 minutes or so of the interview, so three cheers for Twitter.
She agreed with the point I've made elsewhere that the viewing figures for the ashes were dismal, compared to when it was free to air. But kept couching it in terms of choices between competing sports. I guess that's fair enough, but it's also a choice between sports and other stuff.
(...and if it wasn't for Iplayer, I wouldn't know any of this, having missed the programme! )
It sets me wondering about using Twitter though: it'd be an interesting way to organise our preaching. More people listen to phone-ins and live interviews than straight lectures, so if our teaching/reflection was more this style, would more people engage with (and contribute to) it?
Meanwhile Lets have the next Ashes on free TV!
The 'Doesn't Count List'
Came across this on 'Stuff Christians Like', very challenging:
I think every Christian has a “Doesn’t Count List” (DCL), a collection of small things we do that might not be completely in God’s will for our life, but they’re so tiny they don’t really matter. If you say you don’t have a DCL, apparently lying is one of the items on yours because that’s just what you did.
.........You could easily read my Doesn’t Count List and think, “Everybody does that. We can’t be perfect, what’s the big deal?” And you’d be right, we can’t be perfect, but what I’ve found in my own life is that the DCL is never satisfied with staying small and insignificant. It’s a hungry little list. It always wants more of your life. It always wants you to add new things to it. To grow and stretch until it’s a mile long.
If you can cope with a good hard look in the mirror, then it's worth reading the whole post. And if you read it all without being challenged, then you're either a saint or in serious trouble.
'Stuff Christians Like' is not to be confused with 'Stuff Christian Culture Likes', but both are a pretty good reality check.
I think every Christian has a “Doesn’t Count List” (DCL), a collection of small things we do that might not be completely in God’s will for our life, but they’re so tiny they don’t really matter. If you say you don’t have a DCL, apparently lying is one of the items on yours because that’s just what you did.
.........You could easily read my Doesn’t Count List and think, “Everybody does that. We can’t be perfect, what’s the big deal?” And you’d be right, we can’t be perfect, but what I’ve found in my own life is that the DCL is never satisfied with staying small and insignificant. It’s a hungry little list. It always wants more of your life. It always wants you to add new things to it. To grow and stretch until it’s a mile long.
If you can cope with a good hard look in the mirror, then it's worth reading the whole post. And if you read it all without being challenged, then you're either a saint or in serious trouble.
'Stuff Christians Like' is not to be confused with 'Stuff Christian Culture Likes', but both are a pretty good reality check.
Message to the Beeb: We'd Rather Have Freddie than Wossy
The new BBC head of sport was being interviewed by Simon Mayo today, but I missed the interview. Gutted, as I'd sent in a question about when the BBC was going to restore cricket to free TV on behalf of the nation. The nearest I can find to a report on her views is this, from Twitter...
JTLovell1979: @AlisonMitchell Don't think she's a cricket fan by the sound of it. Not v enthusiastic about the Ashes being on BBC
There is a Facebook group calling for the next Ashes (2013 - should give the Beeb long enough to save some cash from Jonathan Ross's salary) to be free on live TV. Please join it.
JTLovell1979: @AlisonMitchell Don't think she's a cricket fan by the sound of it. Not v enthusiastic about the Ashes being on BBC
There is a Facebook group calling for the next Ashes (2013 - should give the Beeb long enough to save some cash from Jonathan Ross's salary) to be free on live TV. Please join it.
What was the Question?
Bit of research from Stateside by Ed Stetzer.
For decades, the phrase, "If you were to die today, do you know for sure you would go to heaven?" was associated with evangelical attempts at sharing their faith. My guess is that millions of people have been asked that question over the last few decades-- and I would not be surprised if God used such a conversation and question and many many became followers of Christ.
But, the question itself always intrigued me. And, one of the great things about my job (as a researcher), is I get to say, "I wonder..."
And, in this case, I wondered how many people really ask that question.
Stetzer compared this with the number of people asking questions about meaning and purpose (see top chart) and argues that approaches to sharing faith that focus on the latter will be more fruitful, which explains the success of books like 'Purpose Driven Life'.
Unless regular churchgoers were excluded from the sample, both the above charts are likely (in the USA at least) to include a sizeable number. It would be helpful to see charts which had the figures for people who aren't Christians. If folk in church are being encouraged to think that the 2 questions above are really important ones, then that could account for most of the responses on the left hand side of the chart.
There's another question about whether particular approaches are actually biblical, and consistent with the way Jesus did things. Apart from telling the thief on the cross that he'd join him in paradise, did Jesus actually address either of the above questions?
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