Why do you like the bible translation that you do?

Timothy at Catholic Bibles blog issued a challenge for bible fanciers:

State your case

[C]learly, yet concisely explain and defend why you like a particular English translation of the Bible. Just choose one. Think of it as your closing statement in a courtroom trial....but just not as long.

Here are some ground rules:

1. Keep focused on your favorite translation! If your argument is obsessed with pointing out every little perceived "fault" or "error" in other translations without recourse to your own translation of choice, I don't consider that a very good position to take in defense of your choice.
2. Use specific examples! If you need to compare and contrast translations to prove your case please do so.
3. Be independent in your thought! Please do not say "Fr. X says this" or "Mother X said that" about this or that translation.
4. Humor is welcomed and even encouraged!
5. Use real life examples! What I mean by this is how and where do you use your Bible of choice? Bible study? Mass? School? How has it worked in these situations? One could also consider explaining why they like the particular edition of their favorite Bible translation in this section. It's up to you.

So, state your case! Perhaps there will be a prize for the best entry.

I don’t know if I can make the case for my favorite English bible (or even to figure out which translation I like most), but I’m reposting it here as blog fodder for others who might take him up on his challenge.

Easy bible quiz at Mental Floss

From Adam to Zephaniah

Score: 100% (15 out of 15)

Today's quiz focuses on Old Testament books that share their titles with the names of Biblical characters. In each set, we'll offer the names of TWO Biblical figures, only ONE of whom lent his or her name to an Old Testament book.

There are fifteen sets, and we'd say that any score of 9 or more should be considered a "win." Good luck!

Piece of cake!

Oops, they did it again

We had another lectionary blooper in today’s service. Nobody proofed the church bulletin for errors, and the OT reading was printed as Deuteronomy 25:1-11 instead of 26:1-11. And the liturgist came unprepared too since she didn’t spot the error, and she proceeded to read out loud in front of the congregation the wrong passage:

1 When men have a dispute, they are to take it to court and the judges will decide the case, acquitting the innocent and condemning the guilty.
2 If the guilty man deserves to be beaten, the judge shall make him lie down and have him flogged in his presence with the number of lashes his crime deserves,
3 but he must not give him more than forty lashes. If he is flogged more than that, your brother will be degraded in your eyes.
4 Do not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain.
5 If brothers are living together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside the family. Her husband's brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to her.
6 The first son she bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel.
7 However, if a man does not want to marry his brother's wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, "My husband's brother refuses to carry on his brother's name in Israel. He will not fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me."
8 Then the elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying, "I do not want to marry her,"
9 his brother's widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his face and say, "This is what is done to the man who will not build up his brother's family line."
10 That man's line shall be known in Israel as The Family of the Unsandaled.
11 If two men are fighting and the wife of one of them comes to rescue her husband from his assailant, and she reaches out and seizes him by his private parts,

When I read it, it sounded so strange for a lectionary reading that I launched my mobile browser to see if it was mistaken, which it was. And, she didn’t read verse 12 and the congregation was left scratching their heads with the abrupt ending.

Richard Dawkins reads the KJV

Oxford scholar and author Richard Dawkins has contributed a reading of a chapter from the Song of Solomon to the 2011 Trust's YouTube Bible project. 

Professor Dawkins was asked why he wanted to participate in the initiative. "You can't appreciate English literature unless you are steeped to some extent in the King James Bible", he replied, "people don't know that proverbial phrases which make echoes in their minds come from this Bible. We are a Christian culture, we come from a Christian culture and not to know the King James Bible, is to be in some small way, barbarian". (source)

Is it worth it?

A high quality bible. Premium calfskin cover. Smyth-sewn binding. American Standard Version. 40,000 word concordance. 24 pages of color maps and charts. Only $40 before shipping ($125 regular price). But…

Due to a printing error, it’s missing the last 13 verses of Exodus 16:

(24) And they laid it up till the morning, as Moses bade: and it did not become foul, neither was there any worm therein.  (25)  And Moses said, Eat that to-day; for to-day is a sabbath unto Jehovah: to-day ye shall not find it in the field.  (26)  Six days ye shall gather it; but on the seventh day is the sabbath, in it there shall be none.  (27)  And it came to pass on the seventh day, that there went out some of the people to gather, and they found none.  (28)  And Jehovah said unto Moses, How long refuse ye to keep my commandments and my laws?  (29)  See, for that Jehovah hath given you the sabbath, therefore he giveth you on the sixth day the bread of two days; abide ye every man in his place, let no man go out of his place on the seventh day.  (30)  So the people rested on the seventh day. (31)  And the house of Israel called the name thereof Manna: and it was like coriander seed, white; and the taste of it was like wafers [made] with honey.  (32)  And Moses said, This is the thing which Jehovah hath commanded, Let an omerful of it be kept throughout your generations, that they may see the bread wherewith I fed you in the wilderness, when I brought you forth from the land of Egypt.  (33) And Moses said unto Aaron, Take a pot, and put an omerful of manna therein, and lay it up before Jehovah, to be kept throughout your generations.  (34) As Jehovah commanded Moses, so Aaron laid it up before the Testimony, to be kept.  (35)  And the children of Israel did eat the manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited; they did eat the manna, until they came unto the borders of the land of Canaan.  (36)  Now an omer is the tenth part of an ephah.

Is it worth it?

Happy Darwin Day!

Even back in my Evangelical Christian days, I had begrudgingly accepted Evolution as God’s mechanism for creating the diversity of biological life. The evidence is just overwhelming. So, in the spirit of Charles Darwin’s 201th birthday, let us celebrate his achievements. Happy Darwin Day!

Methodists coming home?

Leaders of the Methodist Church in the United Kingdom have made a statement desiring to return to the Church of England, centuries after the followers of John Wesley bolted from the mother church to form their own.

As a high-church Anglo-Methodist (albeit a secularized one), I am all for it. Let the conservative wing of the CofE defect back to Rome. The progressive Methodists could make up for the loss and much more. Now all we need is to convince the Anglicans to accept women bishops.

I wish I had $89,500

So that I could buy this:

The infamous “Wicked Bible”. Definitely a collector’s item worth having*.

* Not that I intend to commit adultery. The rarity itself is a big plus.

My 2nd greatest masterpiece

After nine months of toil, I am ready to unveil my 2nd greatest masterpiece. It’s a collaborative effort with my wife, who I must say did all the heavy lifting. But without my initial contribution, this work would not be possible. Without further ado, here it is:

Historical Jesus

In the comment section of James McGrath’s blog, Eric Reitan gave a good analogy of the four major positions on the Historical Jesus:

1. There was an historic king of the Britons named Arthur, and his life was exactly as described by Sir Thomas Malory in _Le Morte d’Arthur_.
2. There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great that, after being slain by a usurper, those loyal to him would gather secretly to swear allegiance to his bloodline and share stories about him—stories said to come from Artur’s closest thanes. The earliest writings from these communities are by a priest more interested in the meaning of Artur’s life than the details of it. But after a few decades, several followers attempted to write accounts of Artur’s life and sayings based on what their respective communities had preserved. While not historically accurate, they offer clues for anyone wanting to understanding the historic King Arthur.
3. There was an historic king of the Britons named Artur whose impact was sufficiently great to prompt storytelling about him. This storytelling became quickly severed from actual historic events, becoming interwoven with the creative fancies of bards whose interest lay more in telling colorful tales than in preserving history. Eventually these stories evolved into the legendary figure we now know as King Arthur. But the King Arthur we encounter in the inherited legends has little similarity to the historic figure that inspired the original storytelling.
4. There was no historic king of the Britons who gave rise to the King Arthur legends. Instead, this figure was wholly an invention of bards interested in creating colorful tales—although the first bard to invent the first King Arthur story borrowed a few of his plotlines from divergent bits of recent events he’d witnessed in his travels, and decided to name his hero “Artur” because he had some vague memory that there was some king by that name who’d lived a generation ago.

Number 1 corresponds to the Fundamentalist/Evangelical confidence in the reliability of the Gospel narratives about Jesus. Ben Witherington and Norman Geisler would be typical examples of #1. The second item corresponds to mainstream Jesus scholarship, which while critical, still allows enough room for confessional Christian beliefs. EP Sanders and Bart Ehrman are some of the more well-known examples. Third is the minimalist historical Jesus position, which I broadly agree with. Randel Helms and Alan Dundes can be said to hold this view. The last item is equated with Jesus mythicists, who do not accept a historical Jesus. Earl Doherty and Acharya S are the well-known exponents of this fringe position.

I declare thus

Via Sabio:

My Atheist positions:

Level of Certainty:	Moderate
Level of Affirmation:	Strong
Stance toward Religion:	Sympathetic
Openness:	Cautiously Open
Degree of Action:	Activist
Religious Participation:	Often
Degree of Enchantment:	Disenchanted
Mystical Inclination:	Non-mystical
Belief History:	Former believer
Sect History:	Baptized Catholic as infant but never confirmed. Baptized Methodist as a teenager. Flirted with Jehovah’s Witness sect as young adult.
Theory of Religion:	I defer to Pascal Boyer.
Non-theistic Leanings:	Naturalism
Degree of  Secular Superstitious Thinking:	Minimal, if any.
View of Reason:	Indispensable tool for understanding the world.
Faith Items:	I have faith in the real world consequences of abstract concepts.

Liberal bible

I was reading the Book of Proverbs last night when I came upon the following verse:

A liberal man will be enriched, and one who waters will himself be watered. (Proverbs 11:25)

Even though "liberal" in this sense means generous, it still struck me as something that would rile the editors of the Conservative Bible Project. So I went to their wiki page to see how they translated it. Unfortunately, they haven’t gone around to doing anything in Proverbs. With Proverbs having a strong emphasis on social justice, I’d like to see how they could achieve their goals of “utilizing the ‘best of the public’ to render God's word into modern English without liberal translation distortions”.

We’ll have to wait and see.

Theological scholarship?

“Christian scholars cannot have their cake and eat it. Carl Trueman of Westminster Theological Seminary, for instance, wrote last week that "all theological scholarship should be done with the ultimate goal of building up the saints, confounding the opponents of the gospel, and encouraging the brethren." If your main goal is to uphold a religious agenda (and again, a very specific one, in this case very conservative Reformed Calvinism), don't call it scholarship.” (Rattigan Writes)

There is some truth in this. From my reading of Evangelical literature, the primary purpose seems to be apologetics, not scholarship.