The benefits of a blog’s blood pressure

It’s been a curious thing, these past 4-5 months. I’ve been incredibly busy with my full-time job and some sidebar freelance projects, nevermind the house and family, the sum of which has left very little time for blogging and other personal projects. After a self-imposed hiatus of several months, I attempted a brief return last month before getting swamped in work again (in fact, I am currently waiting for QA to finish reviewing a file that I am presenting to our clients this afternoon).

Yet despite the paucity of new content, the analytics of this blog have remained relatively stable in averaging ~150 unique visitors a day. Not great, but evidently good enough to land me on the “Top 50″ list last month…

In reviewing the site stats, the importance of archived content in maintaining the “blood pressure” of a blog is clearly underscored. From the beginning of April through mid May, these have been the most visited individual post pages (obviously, I cannot track posts read on the home page):

1. Dinner prayers
2. A new NLT Reference Bible?
3. What were you doing on December 17, 1994?
4. Wretched translations! ESV vs. HCSB: Romans 7:13-25
5. Maybe the question is not “what versions of the Bible do you use”…
6. Isaiah 40:31

Two posts from 2007, two from 2008 and two posted after my “return” last month – that’s a healthy mix. Incidently, the Romans 7 and Weinland (December 17, 1994) posts are the two top posts when I look at all blog activity, at least from the relaunch in April 2008. FWIW – stats are derived from Google Analytics as my WordPress Stats plugin has corrupted itself and is reporting spurious data with no sense of reality (seemingly assigning all the site visits to one random post from archives).

I’m encouraged that people are finding things to read, even when I don’t have the time to write. I’ve thought about going “off air” again, but the benefit of keeping archived content available to those looking is greater than any benefit to me in shuttering the site.

With all your heart, soul and strength: the world vs. God

In 1 John 2:15-17, John offers a rebuttal to the world’s version of the greatest commandment:

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength. (Deuteronomy 6:5)

HCSB	REB
Do not love the world or the things that belong to the world. If anyone loves the world, love for the Father is not in him. For everything that belongs to the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride in one’s lifestyle—is not from the Father, but is from the world. And the world with its lust is passing away, but the one who does God’s will remains forever.	Do not set your hearts on the world or what is in it. Anyone who loves the world does not love the Father. Everything in the world, all that panders to the appetites or entices the eyes, all the arrogance based on wealth, these spring not from the Father but from the world. That world will all its allurements is passing away, but those who do God’s will remain for ever.
ESV	NLTse
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.	Do not love this world nor the things it offers you, for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see, and pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father, but are from this world. And this world is fading away, along with everything that people crave. But anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

Specifically:

• Compare “all your heart” — e.g. your mind and intellect — to the selfish “lust of the eyes”;
• Compare “all your soul” — e.g. your entire emotional and spiritual being — to the “pride” of possessions, wealth, lifestyle and achievement;
• Compare “all your strength” — e.g. your physical being — with “the lust of the flesh” and its appetite for physical pleasure.

Facebook: Which Protestant denomination should you join?

Usually I don’t populate Facebook items here, but this was a recent quiz that I thought some might find interesting (HT: Mike Beidler) – not sure if it’s available in a non-Facebook format. My result is particularly interesting to me in that Disciples of Christ shares a common root with the quasi-denomination that I grew up in, the Independent Christian Churches/Churches of Christ. Both come from the Restoration Movement, which emerged from the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century.

There’s quite a bit here that I agree with and a little bit that gives me pause. I’ve highlighted the specific items that resonate strongly.

Your Result: Christian Church (Disciples of Christ)

The Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a renewal movement that sought to unify the Church on Scripture alone. Influenced by both the Presbyterian and Baptist Churches, the polity is both congregational with the leadership of local elders within the congregation. Rejecting Creeds and Denominational Confessional Statements as a test of fellowship, they maintain that the Good Confession that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God is the only mandatory confession. There is a strong heritage of congregational autonomy which leads to great diversity within various congregations. Diversity in liturgy, music and organizational practices are prevalent. Ultimately a strong sense of the Churches unity is a unifying force within the movement. Baptism of adults by immersion into the one Body of Christ is practiced, although those who transfer into the Church having been baptized other ways are accepted. Holy Communion is celebrated weekly with both clergy and laity serving at the Table. The ultimate authority is Scripture as each believer is given the freedom to interpret Scripture within the community of faith. the heritage of the Church’s history, specifically the early church, which is held in high regard. Although initially a fairly conservative movement, the Disciples (as they are often called) believe in the equality of all believers. Therefore, it is not uncommon to have women in position of leadership as well as baptized youth.

The last two sentences seemed fair enough to me until I looked up one of the local congregations, where I found this statement on their home page:

We are thoroughly committed to the Christian tradition, but we reject the notion that Christianity must condemn all other religious traditions. A summary of the way we think is that we seek to be the people of God only, without claiming to be the only people of God.

Is that really what is meant by “the equality of all believers”? That’s not how I originally read it, but maybe it has multiple meanings. I’m trying to reconcile that with my understanding of Jesus in John 14:6 as “the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through [Christ].”

In community on a desert island

As part of the ongoing thread on “best uses for different Bible versions“, Dave S. posted his various preferences (NASB, ESV, HCSB, NLT), then followed up with the following anecdote:

I told my friend about my “favorite four” post above. He said, “That sounds good but which one would you choose if you could have just one; you know, the deserted island thing?” I hate the deserted island question. It’s not based in reality but I played along and said “It depends.” “Depends on what?”, he queried. “Are there any other people stranded on the island with me or am I alone?” “What does that matter?”, he said with a puzzled look. So I explained… “If I was alone, I’d pick the HCSB. If I was with someone else, I’d pick the ESV because it would get read out loud.” “No other reasons?”, he asked. I said, “Sure, but that pretty well sums it up. They’re both good for multipurpose use.” He shook his head, then shrugged his shoulders and said “Hmmmm” So I added, “And since I live in a world with other people around me, where the bible is read out loud, I tend to use the ESV most.” to which he replied “I’m ok with that I guess.” We smiled and we left it at that.

It’s a brilliant conclusion and one worth remembering for those of us who live with stacks of different Bible translations by our computers. Like it or not, the vast majority of us live in community with other people and I’m not meaning the blogosphere. For me, it happens to be a “NIV community”, though I prefer the TNIV or HCSB as similar translations. My “desert island” translation is the NEB or REB, but it’s hard to find common ground with other people when using an idiosyncratic text that I may not even understand completely.

I have concerns about the long-term viability of both the TNIV and HCSB, as most recently illustrated here, so I am still faced with a dilemna of choice, assuming that I do not adopt the NIV as my primary text. It seems that, from a marketing perspective in the early 21st century, the mainstream evangelical translations will be the ESV, NIV and NLT – so which community do you identify with?

Misled, duped and deceived

I was flipping through the prophets a few days ago and couldn’t resist this idiosyncratic rendering in the REB, which I offer compared to examples of traditional, median and functional translation.

Jeremiah 20:7

REB	TNIV
You have duped me, Lord, and I have been your dupe; you have outwitted me and prevailed. All the day long I have been made a laughing-stock; everyone ridicules me.	You deceived me, LORD, and I was deceived; you overpowered me and prevailed. I am ridiculed all day long; everyone mocks me.
ESV	NLTse
O Lord, you have deceived me, and I was deceived; you are stronger than I, and you have prevailed. I have become a laughingstock all the day; everyone mocks me.	O LORD, you misled me, and I allowed myself to be misled. You are stronger than I am, and you overpowered me. Now I am mocked every day; everyone laughs at me.

Read the translation notes from the NET Bible to possibly shed some light on the differences.

When Pharaoh was a woman…

The April issue of National Geographic has an interesting article on Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I (ruler, 1504-1492 BC), and married to her step-brother, Thutmose II (ruler, 1492-1479 BC). When Thutmose II died,  his son (Thutmose III, by another wife) was still young and Hatshepsut acted as regent and then co-ruler of Egypt from 1479-1458 BC, one of a small handful of female Pharaohs.

According to the NLT Study Bible (and presumably other sources), the most generally accepted dates for the events of Exodus are in the 1400s, with some evidence suggesting later dates as an alternative. Assuming the former, I found some intriguing points to speculate about in the article (which you really ought to read for context):

• It is impossible to know how many Pharaohs there actually were in the Exodus timeline. Most of the early rulers of the 18th Dynasty (Ahmose) ruled for only 20 years or so before dying. The Exodus narrative includes potentially large gaps in the timeline when one or more of these rulers could have passed by (cf. Exodus 1:11-14, 1:20-21, 2:11).
• That said, that there are possibly as many as four specific Pharaohs in the early chapters of Exodus. The first “knew nothing about Joseph or what he had done”. The NLTSB indicates that this period likely corresponds to the ascension of Pharaoh Ahmose (Hatshepsut’s grandfather), who expelled the foreign Hyksos rulers that had been so sympathetic to the Israelite patriarchs. The second Exodus Pharaoh – if not the same as the first – is the ruler who ordered the death of the baby boys (cf. Exodus 1:22). The third Pharaoh is the one who dies while Moses is in Midian (cf. Exodus 2:23). The last, and most prominent, is the ruler that Moses negotiates with on his return to Egypt.
• Hatshepsut’s uncle was Amenhotep I, son of Ahmose. He was unable to have a son and heir – might this have led in part to an edict to kill the Hebrew sons when they were born?
• Hatshepsut had a daughter, Neferure, with Thutmose II. Might this be the Pharaoh’s daughter of Exodus 2:5-10? Or might it even be Hatshepsut herself if the events of Moses’ birth are a generation earlier?
• Note the similarity between “Moses”, “Ahmose” and “Thutmose“. In order to keep the dynasty going due to Amenhotep’s lack of a heir, Hapshetsut’s mother married an army general, Thutmose I, who was not of royal lineage. If Hatshepsut is the daughter of Exodus 2, there might be some irony at play here, perhaps a dig at the legitimacy of a Pharaoh grafted onto the royal family.
• By all accounts, Hapshetsut recorded her rule over Egypt as if she were a man, so any male references in the Bible to the Pharaoh are reconcilable. I do find it very interesting that the third Pharaoh mentioned in my second point above is known as “the king of Egypt”, not “the Pharaoh”. While normally “king” is a masculine gendered term, there is evidence that Hapshetsut appropriated the title for herself. Was this the author’s Moses’ way of denoting a difference between Hapshetsut and the male Pharaohs that came before and after her?

Many accounts indicate that the Pharaoh that negotiates with Moses might have been Thutmose III, step-son of Hatshepsut. He was a successful military leader and led many campaigns, including tours of Canaan and Syria, presumably while Moses and the Hebrews were wandering in the Sinai desert. Would it be irony if God used the same Pharaoh who opposed Moses to then “soften up” the Promised Land for the Israelites’ later conquest?

How much do you have to hate someone?

I don’t know if this video made it around the blogs in the last few months, but it was used as an illustration point a month or so ago at our church and I thought it was worth sharing. Regardless of what you think about Penn Jillette (Penn & Teller) as an atheist, his question at about the 3-minute mark is worth repeating:

If you believe in heaven and hell, how much do you have to hate someone to not proselytize them?

The TNIV, sarx and the inclinations of the human heart

The Better Bibles blog is soliciting input on what types of changes would make the TNIV a “better Bible” – specifically, textual changes that could be reviewed by the Committee on Bible Translation rather than marketing changes better suited to Zondervan. While I tend to agree with the first commenter, Rick Mansfield, that the TNIV doesn’t suffer from translation issues as much as political issues, there still may be some opportunity for discussion.

The TNIV of course is a revision of the venerable NIV. As such, many areas remain the same as the older translation – one textual decision that has been criticized by many over the years is the translation of the Gk. sarx as “sinful nature”. Now, I hasten to add that as part of its mediating approach, the T/NIV does not use “sinful nature” as a universal translation for sarx. Other renderings, such as “sinful humanity” and “human flesh”, make it clear that the translation team understood the term to have different nuances in different settings and as used by different authors.

To the best of my understanding, the issue with “sinful nature” is that we read it as something innately bad about our natural selves (body, soul, mind) rather than a corruption of a “good” creation made in the image of God. Nevermind then that Jesus Christ took on the flesh and became human. If our flesh is inherently sinful, than Jesus Christ could not be but sinful if he was 100% human.

I don’t have a good answer with respect to when and how sin entered our bodies, but I do know that I prefer the language used by God himself in Genesis 8.21:

Never again will I curse the ground because of human beings, even though every inclination of the human heart is evil from childhood. (TNIV, emphasis mine)

Here we see that the human heart is inclined toward evil in every matter and that we slide down that slippery slope more easily than not, even at the youngest age. But it also keeps open the possibility of a human heart, directed and led by the Spirit, that might resist such natural temptation and consequent corruption. This was the case of Jesus, yes?

With this mind, how might a sarx passage such as this from Romans 8 be rendered?

TNIV	TNIV, Modified
8.3-4: For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the sinful nature, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful humanity to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the sinful nature but according to the Spirit.	8.3-4: For what the law was powerless to do because it was weakened by the inclinations of the human heart, God did by sending his own Son in a human body to be a sin offering. And so he condemned sin in human flesh, in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fully met in us, who do not live according to the inclinations of our hearts but according to the Spirit.

The New Jerusalem Bible is the only published translation I’ve seen that gets close to this rendering:

vv.3-4: What the Law could not do because of the weakness of human nature, God did, sending his own Son in the same human nature as any sinner to be a sacrifice for sin, and condemning sin in that human nature. This was so that the Law’s requirements might be fully satisfied in us as we direct our lives not by our natural inclinations but by the Spirit.

Maybe the question is not “what versions of the Bible do you use”…

Note: the following post contains some thoughts on Wayne Leman’s recent question on BBB as to “what versions of the Bible do you use and what is the most important use you have found for each of those versions?” In that post, my two-cent answer was:

NLT’07 for everyday reading and study; HCSB or TNIV for my “church” Bible (we are a NIV church and I’ve found those two translations work really well for reading along with the NIV). And (too) many others for comparison’s sake.

The point of this post is not that answer. However, to get to the point, I will need to retread some related background. Long-time readers of this blog will remember that I used the NASB almost exclusively for 20 years and long subscribed to the “literal is best” mindset. After a little experimentation, I kicked off this blog with the purpose of finding a current translation that satisfied my sensibilities for modern English and that could be used in a variety of settings, including devotional reading, personal studies and at church. The four translations that I considered alongside the NASB — the NLTse, TNIV, HCSB and REB — have all rotated through my hands at various points since then (and still do).

Looking back at my time with the NASB, it was a very simple experience – the Bible was the Bible and my “quiet still waters” were not muddied by translation debates. I find myself longing for that type of experience again and am continually challenging myself on whether comparing and interacting with different translations is a selfish “wisdom of this world” desire.

If I were convicted about the appropriateness of functional translation before my blogging “sabbatical”, I am even more so now — convinced that to enter into a living, breathing dialog with God’s Word, the Bible needs to be not just read, but lived in language that allows the narratives of our day-to-day lives to enter and mingle with the details of God’s story. Everyday stories aren’t told in the stilted language of scribes or theologians, but of fishermen, carpenters, tentmakers, shepherds, web designers, youth leaders, parents and children. There will always be trained theologians like Paul who write with difficult words for a specialized audience, but, for me, to be in a lover’s relationship with the gospel means I must enjoy and reflect everyday intimacy with the Word, not the lechery of enjoying the text for the purpose of my own enjoyment.

For some, this intimacy comes from understanding and exploring the Greek and Hebrew texts; for others, what they believe to be a literal representation of those texts in English. As for me, I am finding intimacy in contentment, in knowing that even though the translation I use (whatever it may be) may not convey every shade of possible meaning of an original text, the meaning that is there is sufficient to kindle an everlasting flame and keep it well oiled.

In a similar discussion about the BBB’s question, blogger Tim McCormick pondered whether it is good to use different Bibles, then commented that:

Sometimes the key might just be accepting a translation, knowing its positive and negative features, and just sticking with it. I think I just lose out in building a relationship with the Sacred Text when I am always switching translations.

After so much time spent pondering and comparing translations, I am coming to agree with Tim. This concept of consistent relational reading has been in the forefront of my thoughts lately as I’m reading Eugene Peterson’s book Eat This Word. We get very insulated when we sit surrounded by multiple translations and compare this phrase or contrast that verse. It’s much like saying “what can I get from the Bible today?”, when the real question is “what can I give from the Bible today?” In Eat This Word, Peterson writes:

We do not read the Bible in order to find out how to get God into our lives, get him to participate in our lives. That’s getting it backward.

And then later:

If I am not participating in the reality — the God reality, the creation/salvation/holiness reality — revealed in the Bible, [....] I am probably not going to be much interested in reading about it – at least not for long.

That is, our interest in reading the Bible is driven by our active participation in the reality of the Bible, in God’s Kingdom. When we cease to participate in God’s work, we cease to be interested in understanding God’s Word. It becomes a circle, with our participation leading to greater understanding of God’s word, which informs our participation.

I pursue the way of Your commands, for You broaden my understanding. (Psalm 119:32, HCSB)

In this way, faith leads to work leads to wisdom and back again. As such, I wonder if the actual question might be:

What are you doing in the Kingdom of God that is driving your choice of Bible translations?

ESV Study Bible available for Kindle

According to the ESV blog, Crossway has released the ESV Study Bible for the Kindle electronic book reader. In keeping with Amazon’s attempt to keep Kindle book pricing low, the ESV Study Bible can be purchased and downloaded for less than $10! This looks like an introductory promotion until June, when the price increases to the princely sum of $14.99 (compared to at least $40 for the hardback).

I have not yet picked up a copy of the ESV Study Bible and I have to confess to being moderately curious as to how the format works on the Kindle. I would expect a large amount of clicking to access verse notes, as with any Kindle-formatted Bible, but the additional articles and maps would be additional challenges to access. The full-color illustrations would definitely lose some impact with the Kindle’s greyscale presentation.

** Update ** Crossway has made the Gospel of Luke available as their free “sample” download on Amazon – I’ve downloaded that and will take a closer look at how the notes work.