Work has been insanely busy the last couple of weeks, including evening hours and a few overnights, which explains the paucity of posts here recently. But while I haven’t had the chance to formulate more than a few scattered thoughts of my own, many of you have been posting some quality material to think about. I wanted to take a chance to spotlight a couple of recent posts that have stayed active in my blogreader:
- In addition to his blog sporting a fishy new look and name, Kevin Sam has kicked off a comparative review of formal Bible translations, including the NASB, ESV and NRSV [see here and here for some of his initial thoughts]. While I’ve moved away from using formal translation in my primary Bible, I will be very interested to follow Kevin’s progress.
- I’ve already mentioned Bryan Lilly’s comments on Revelation 20 in an earlier post…
- Mike at εν εφέσω posted a challenge to pick natural renderings of 1 Timothy 6:10, then issued another challenge for bloggers to post their own translations. John Hobbins put together what he’s calling a literary translation of this verse, which includes a nice image and turn of phrase borrowed from the REB. In the comments to John’s post, Iyov reminds us again that the KJV was the original “literary translation”, which in turn rekindled my interest in the New Cambridge Paragraph Bible…
- In addition to leaving lengthy comments on this blog, Steve at Undeception has found support for a corporate reading of the predestination language of Romans 9 in the parallel potter passage in Jeremiah 18.
- Nathan Stitt has created a new blog, Discipulus Scripturae, “to document [his] attempt to teach [him]self ancient Greek.” Thankfully, he hasn’t used a combination of squiggles as his blog title… Mike, Bryan, Esteban, ahem.
- Wayne Leman at Better Bibles has been blogging for most of the last month on natural English and the desirability of it in translation. His latest post, “familiarity vs. naturalness“, is excellent fodder to think about as you read Kevin’s comparisons of formal translations, and the ensuing comments are rich indeed.
- J. Mark Bertrand has published a review of the new ESV Personal Size Reference Edition, which looks a bit like a TNIV Reference Bible shrunk down to hand size, unfortunately including the same problem that the body text is too small for its single column layout. Crossway and Zondervan needed to bump their respective editions up to 10 or 11pt size text to balance it to the page size and reference column. To my eyes, Foundation’s layout with their single-column NASB Reference Bible is close to ideal, though it is the verse-by-verse format, not paragraph.
- Former full preterist Roderick Edwards (no relation, as far as I know) has been posting his thoughts on extracting himself from that view [see here and here].
- As a semi-followup to his posts on his “top ten” Bibles, which managed to rub many Christian evangelicals the wrong way, Iyov has posted on the differences between Oxford/Cambridge and “American junk publishers”.
I’ll be traveling (for work) the next couple of days, so I may be scarce around these parts, but I will try to check in as I can. I’m looking forward to my workload relaxing a little bit, though these days it’s certainly better to be busy than bored when it comes to employment!
P.S. I picked up a copy of Lincoln Brewster’s “Let the Praises Ring — The Best of…” on iTunes and have been enjoying his renderings. The instrumental version of “Here I Am to Worship” has a Joe Satriani quality to it that’s just otherworldly.
P.P.S. Sometime in the next 3-4 days, this blog will pass 30,000 total views – thank you!
Hey, everyone knows that whatever squiggly marks show up on my blog title, they mean “The Voice of Stefan”… er, right?
Esteban, doesn’t “КОСОВО ЈЕ СРБИЈ…” in fact mean something like “Kosovo is Serbian”? The trouble with that sentiment is that the people of Kosovo don’t agree.
My squiggly marks are easier to read than Esteban’s….
…for me anyways.
Peter> It means “Kosovo is Serbia,” not “Serbian.”
Bryan> I liked your squiggly marks better before the change.
Anyone know a good font for Latin?
BTW, nice summary ElSh.
Since the end of the word is missing, I should have suggested the rendering “Kosovo is Serbi…”. But the people of that part of Serbia don’t agree.
Very nice summary, ElShaddai. On another note, why do your links to my posts not show up on tecnnorati? That’s a techie question for you. I’ve noticed that I can’t count on technorati to let me know who is referencing my posts. Is there another way to know this?
Furthermore, my technorati rating has been stuck at 141 for months. This is also a mystery.
Esteban: Is that before the change from -εω -ον to -ω -ω, or the change from ακολουθω χριστω to ΑΚΟΛΟΥΘΩΧΡΙΣΤΩ? I’ve been doing way to much change!
Peter> It’s actually quite unmistakably “Kosovo is Serbia” rather than anything else; “Kosovo is Serbian” would be “Косово је српско.” (But I haven’t seen the latter very much at all.)
Bryan> I meant the first change; I always thought the lexical form+wrong case was great! I was kind of disappointed to learn it was not intentional.
And dude, I like the continuous script!
Now let us all join hands in solidarity with John Hobbins, whose Technorati ranking is stuck at 141 (!). Oh, John.
haha yeah, I’ll just say that it was intentional from now on….
John, I wish I could be stuck on 141. ha. Well maybe not. That would mean that more people are reading me, which means there is a greater chance of them seeing my post on the name change, and I won’t be able to say it was intentional.
Also, I think ElShaddai should put Esteban, Mike, and I under a new heading on his blogroll: Squiggles
Thanks all for the comments – sitting here in a hotel room in Tampa, getting ready for all day meetings…
@John: I know very little about Technorati – I’ve noodled around their site a bit, but couldn’t tell you what drives their rating counters or what benefit their service provides.
I always assumed that the absence of “trackback” links on your site was just part of a blackhole between the Typepad and WordPress blogging platforms. I actually have a Typepad account now, having accidentally forgotten to cancel a trial account, so maybe I’ll play around with that and see if there’s a solution.
@Bryan: Squiggles… I actually have had that idea before, especially if I stripped away the explanatory English text. I’ll have to play around with some blogroll category names, since, AFAIK, WordPress.com confoundingly only allows one Links widget with categories alpha sorted.
How does “Squiggles in the Sand” sound?
Yeah, it only allows one. If you’re really desperate, you can just type them all in manually using a text widget. One text widget for each category.
You’d have to be really bored one day I guess heh. Or studying for midterms (which was the impetus for my new design).
I like “Squiggles in the Sand,” but I do have qualify it by saying I don’t think the pericope adulterae is original text.
So if anyone asks me, I’ll just say that when Jesus makes His squiggles in the sand, it’s interesting to read and think about, but not inspired :-p Actually that could work as advertising for my blog: “aK: Interesting to think about, but not inspired”
Oh, I like squiggles! I may be even persuaded to change my blog title (back) to Greek–much to Nick Norelli’s chagrin, I’m sure.
“Squiggles” have been added… though I fear I’ve already corrupted its purity by adding John’s and Nathan’s blogs to the category as well.
Update: sorry, I couldn’t stay with it, at least not this time. That’s the trouble with squiggles, I guess…