A great deluge

This September 26 will live down in history as a day of tragedy. The Philippines was inundated with a great deluge, overwhelming our antiquated sewer system. Whole communities were flooded up to the rooftops, and reports show that at least 70 people have lost their lives. Thankfully, the flood waters did not reach our house, but water and phone services were temporarily interrupted. In church today (yes, I still attend church), there were only a few dozen congregants who managed to attend, the church lights have been short-circuited, and only four choir members were able to show up. Such a terrible weekend indeed.

Oh, and September 26 is my birthday. :(

The Filipino Standard Version

There's a new translation of the New Testament in the Filipino (Tagalog) language, the Filipino Standard Version (FSV). According to an article from the Philippine Bible Society:

FSV is the first literary-liturgical translation in the country, which aside from a faithful translation from the original Greek text, is also translated to sound lovely when publicly or communally read in churches. The words used in this translation are formal, yet lyrical and contemporary in style and flow to ensure a pleasurable reading experience of the New Testament in our rich Filipino language.

Since it was announced during an official meeting of the Philippine Council of Evangelical Churches, I assume it's a protestant translation. Unfortunately, the press release did not say who the translators are, their affiliations, what translation philosophy was followed, which greek texts were used, etc. They didn't even quote a few verses. Bad journalism.

Personally, I don't use Filipino bibles. The ones available either have a vocabulary that is too archaic or too wooden for most people to understand and appreciate. Also, local bible versions aren't even translated from the original languages. The Filipino bible I have in my PC (and distributed in bible softwares) is a translation of the ASV, which is an American revision of the RV, which revised the KJV, which used Tyndale and the Geneva Bible, which are based on questionable greek texts.

The FSV promises to answer these concerns. First, according to the press release, it will be contemporary. While not explicitly stated in the original article, I assume that the translation is going to be dynamic-equivalent. Or at least that's what I want it to be. Second, since it was translated "from the original Greek tex", the translation will not be a translation of a translation.

Updated: Fixed link

Cult leader decrypts bible for his faithful

According to a member of a Philippine-based cult, their glorious leader (and erstwhile fugitive) was able to decipher the “mystery” of 1 Timothy 2:14. Unfortunately, said member was so moved by the wisdom of the cult leader, that he failed to tell the rest of the world what the mystery and the solution was. I guess we’ll just take his word on faith.

Mary’s Birthday

Today is the Nativity of Mary, a Roman Catholic feast day celebrated exactly nine months after the Feast of the Immaculate Conception. It’s celebrated in Catholic schools, which in the Philippines means the majority of private schools. Being a non-biblical doctrine, I can’t figure out how this date was chosen. Did it supplant an earlier pagan holiday, as some other Christian holidays were?

Update: I found this from the Catholic Encyclopedia:

Since the story of Mary's Nativity is known only from apocryphal sources, the Latin Church was slow in accepting this oriental festival. It does not appear in many calendars which contain the Assumption, e.g. the Gotho-Gallican, that of Luxeuil, the Toledan Calendar of the tenth century, and the Mozarabic Calendar. The church of Angers in France claims that St. Maurilius instituted this feast at Angers in consequence of a revelation about 430. On the night of 8 Sept., a man heard the angels singing in heaven, and on asking the reason, they told him they were rejoicing because the Virgin was born on that night (La fête angevine N.D. de France, IV, Paris, 1864, 188); but this tradition is not substantiated by historical proofs. The feast is found in the calendar of Sonnatius, Bishop of Reims, 614-31 (Kellner, Heortology, 21). Still it cannot be said to have been generally celebrated in the eighth and ninth centuries. St. Fulbert, Bishop of Chartres (d. 1028), speaks of it as of recent institution (P.L., cxli, 320, sqq.); the three sermons he wrote are the oldest genuine Latin sermons for this festival (Kellner, "Heortology", London, 1908, 230). The octave was instituted by Innocent IV (a. 1243) in accordance with a vow made by the cardinals in the conclave of the autumn of 1241, when they were kept prisoners by Frederick II for three months.

So, the September 8 date for the birth of Mary did not come from a pagan original but from visions of an unnamed mystic (it is the Roman Catholic Church after all). The apocryphal source alluded to in the above excerpt probably refers to the Infancy Gospel of James, which discusses the Nativity of Mary but does not give an exact date.

The NIV reloaded

The biblioblog world is abuzz with the announcement that the popular evangelical English bible, the New International Version, will be updated and scheduled for release in 2011. While I rarely use the NIV anymore, this version holds a special place in my heart. It was the pew bible in the Methodist church I attended, it was the translation of choice in the "non-sectarian" private school I attended, and I had used it personally for biblical and devotional study.

Since English was not my first language, I struggled with other English bibles, especially the "biblish" Tyndale-based versions (KJV, RSV, NASB). The NIV was just easier to read and understand. I have owned three NIVs, of which two are still extant (I never found out what happened to the third). One was the NIV Student Bible given to me as a gift by my camp counselor when I had attended bible camp as a teen, the other was a devotional study bible my sister gave me cause she doesn't care for religion and thought I would find a better use for it.

As I said, I no longer use the NIV as much. It is, after all, an evangelical version and the biblical text and especially the commentaries that came with the NIV tend toward a strongly evangelical viewpoint. When I started to drift from evangelicalism, I had become sufficiently comfortable with biblish to start using the RSV and even the ASV. But even then, I use the NIV as a supplement, especially in those passages where the RSV uses archaic expressions.

With the ever-changing face of the evangelical movement, and perhaps also for monetary considerations, the publishers of the NIV think it's time to update. I doubt that they can convince the NIV-faithful to accept a new edition (the 1984 version is good enough for Jesus!). And given their pathetic handling of the TNIV, this latest move might signal that the era of the NIV may finally be coming to an end. There's a new darling of the more conservative evangelicals, the English Standard Version. Since it's based on the RSV, the ESV will probably be difficult for non-native English readers (although the use of modern English is a positive). The NIV 2011 translation committee must not make any boneheaded mistakes. It'll give the other evangelical translations just the space to drive a wedge in.

The deaths of Philippine religious leaders

Today marks the 69th death anniversary of Gregorio Aglipay, co-founder and first bishop of the Iglesia Filipina Independiente, a Catholic breakaway national church in the Philippines. I don't know much about their beliefs but I'd assume that it's similar to the Roman Catholic Church. The church is in full communion with the Episcopalian Church and the Anglican Communion.

My mother-in-law is a former Aglipayan but converted to Catholicism. She doesn't remember anything about her former church, except that it's just like Catholic churches but with married priests. I didn't press further for fear of annoying my in-law with religion talk. (I am still in the atheist closet when it comes to my wife's family.)

And just yesterday, August 31st, Eraño G. Manalo, the current supreme leader of the Iglesia ni Cristo cult sect died of a heart attack. I have blogged about the INC before, where I pointed out their fanciful usage of various bible translations to bolster their belief that their church is the one true church. They're also staunchly anti-trinitarian, which they believe is a Catholic heresy.

I found out about his death this afternoon when I drove slowly through a major traffic congestion near their main church in Commonwealth Avenue. Devotees from all over the archipelago (numbering in the millions) will converge in this area to visit his wake. I expect the commute to be torture for a few days more.