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Evangelical

2024-12-20T23:12:16-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What Difference Can a Literal Translation Make?–Part 1

Last updated on: December 20, 2024 at 11:12 pm By Ben Witherington

If we follow the advice of Robert Alter, we will avoid the pitfall of trying to do explanation in a translation rather than doing an appropriate literal translation and letting the commentary do the explaining. So let’s take a few samples from Alter’s renderings of Gen. 1-5. So in the very first verse of Genesis we have “the earth was then welter and waste’ a rendering of tohu wubohu. As you can see from the transliteration, the Hebrew rhymes, one of... Read more

History and Religion

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It is not good for the man to be alone

2024-12-15T06:19:20-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

But What Would Jesus Say?

Last updated on: December 15, 2024 at 6:19 am By Ben Witherington

A Sign outside a house I saw in Lexington yesterday. There are so many things wrong with this sign: 1) If you dealing with a criminal who is not right with Jesus, a threat with a gun is not going to fix that. You are more likely to be sending him straight to Hell, and do you want that on your conscience?; 2) this is totally incompatible with love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you, turn the other... Read more

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love your enemies

2024-12-13T12:55:51-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

The Harbinger

Last updated on: December 13, 2024 at 12:55 pm By Ben Witherington

THE HARBINGER Quite quiet Unexpectedly The Harbinger appears Foreshadowing or foretelling Events of coming years. But for good or ill? The image is opaque The Harbinger relates Some kind of news But first or second rate? Hindsight seems much clearer The Harbinger does not A most unwelcome warning The future’s unclear Like shadows before morning? But if its undetermined Then there’s time to make a change Time to make amends For wrongs that have been... Read more

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Who holds the future

2024-12-12T17:09:56-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Things that Can Go Wrong at Christmas

Last updated on: December 12, 2024 at 5:09 pm By Ben Witherington

Obviously there are foods to avoid. Actually real fig pudding is quite nice and a regular feature of the Christmas season in the U.K.– its sweet and tasty. If you ever wondered what could go wrong with Santa once a year trying to fly a bunch of reindeer to locations all over the world, let me tell you its not just about getting stuck in someone’s chimney, as the picture above shows. Wind turbines are dangerous to anything flying. Rumor... Read more

Family, Parenting and Religion

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What's in your oven?

2024-12-11T08:58:14-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Found in Translation– Part Five

Last updated on: December 11, 2024 at 8:58 am By Ben Witherington

While Robert Alter recognizes the traditional source criticism (JEDP) applied to Genesis, he also believes that one can take the final edited form of Genesis as a coherent whole, indeed as a ‘sefer’ the Hebrew word for ‘scroll’, or later for ‘book’. His translation is based on the latter assumption. He draws an analogy with medieval cathedral to which bits and parts was added over the course of many years and even centuries to create a composite whole. ‘What seems... Read more

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On the genesis of Genesis

2024-12-10T13:03:21-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Found in Translation– Part Four

Last updated on: December 10, 2024 at 1:03 pm By Ben Witherington

The Biblical writers of the OT prose revel in repetition, and are not much given to using synonyms, when one particular word will do the job wherever it needs to be used. It is in poetry that you will find them using synonyms from time to time. “The translator’s task, then is to mirror the repetitions as much as is feasible.” (p.xxvii). Yet surprisingly, even with this deliberately limited vocabulary the terms used can convey nuance for instance ‘the man... Read more

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It's all Hebrew to me...

2024-12-09T17:02:43-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Christmas is Coming!

Last updated on: December 9, 2024 at 5:02 pm By Ben Witherington

Long before there was a Chris Tomlin, terrific contemporary Christmas music was being made by Michael W. Smith and Amy Grant. Here’s a nice sample of three of the best songs on Smith’s Christmas lp. I hope you will check out the whole thing. Christmas is coming! Read more

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'Twas much that man was made like God long before

but that God should be made like man

much more. John Donne

2024-12-08T08:52:52-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Found in Translation– Part Three

Last updated on: December 8, 2024 at 8:52 am By Ben Witherington

Reading an expert in ancient Hebrew is refreshing compared to reading the notes of a modern translation team, which confuses what the words say, with an explanation of their meaning. Robert Alter points out that in the dialogue in the OT all the characters speak proper literary Hebrew, without any slang, but also without any stilted language either— but in Genesis there is one exception. In order to represent the crudeness of the character of Esau in Gen. 25 he... Read more

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Attention both literalists and paraphrasers

2024-12-07T18:13:04-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Gladiator 2

Last updated on: December 7, 2024 at 6:13 pm By Ben Witherington

It is always difficult to make a sequel to a great movie like Gladiator, which amazingly came out 24 years ago, and was highly rated and reviewed. This movie is more of a spectacle than the first one, and it includes a sea battle in the Roman colosseum. Yes, there is a good deal of gore in this R rated film but there is also a lot of story and intrigue in this movie. It is set during the reign... Read more

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strength and honor

2024-12-07T09:38:51-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Found in Translation– Part Two

Last updated on: December 7, 2024 at 9:38 am By Ben Witherington

One thing you notice right away from Alter’s various translation volumes, is they all have not only textual notes, but also commentary, on page after page. Not a full fledged commentary like in a study Bible, but if one follows the advice of Alter to let the translation simply tell us what the original language text actually says, and leave the explaining of the meaning to commentary, then I suppose ever Bible would need to become a study Bible of... Read more

Education and Religion

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Rethinking the translation of the Hebrew OT

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