Dr Paul Allen

I have posted a few times on issues of translating the Bible, and how they affect its interpretation through the centuries. My subject today is on the bizarre side. Does it affect key issues of faith, scripture, and orthodoxy? Not in the slightest. But it does point to some important themes in understanding translation, even some of the most venerable and respected versions of the Bible. There is a Hebrew word that we transliterate as tan, with the feminine form tannah, which refers to jackals. It occurs, for instance, in Malachi 1.3 where God declares that, according to the NIV, “Esau I have hated, and I have turned his hill country into a wasteland and left his inheritance to the desert jackals.” That is straightforward, and it makes excellent sense in the context. But here is the problem.  From the same root, there is another word tannin, which usually means a regular snake or serpent, but can also signify a monster, sea serpent, or sea monster. The word is used in this sense on...

1. Heartfelt Gratitude and Joy One of the most important experiences of my life was when we met indigenous people in Woorabinda in Queensland. We did some outreaches, children's ministry and spoke to the locals. Then we read books on Bible translation work happening in the Northern Territory. It took 30 years to translate the Bible with two separate teams performing the task. They had a group of non-Christian indigenous women who helped the white translators. The most amazing part of the story was not only there a great celebration upon the completion of the Bible, but these women were saved during the process of translation and knowing the Bible intimately they became pastors. Imagine devoting decades of your life lives so that other people would have the Bible in their own language?  People at the ceremony were weeping because they were able to read a Bible in their own language for the first time. There are still thousands of people groups who do not have translations of t...

English: Statue of William Tyndale in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, London (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) William Tyndale 's final words before the chain around his neck strangled him to death were, "Lord, open the king of England 's eyes." That dying prayer was answered two years after Tyndale's death, when King Henry VIII ordered that the Bible of Miles Coverdale was to be used in every parish in the land. The Coverdale Bible was largely based on Tyndale's work. Then, in 1539, Tyndale's own edition of the Bible became officially approved for printing. Tyndale's translation inspired the great translations that followed, including the Great Bible (1539, also compiled by Coverdale), the Geneva Bible (1560), the Bishops' Bible (1568), the Douay-Rheims Bible (1582-1609), and the Authorized or King James Version (1611). A complete analysis of the King James shows that Tyndale's words account for eighty-four percent of the New Testament and...

Image via Wikipedia "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels , and have not charity , I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal." ( 1 Corinthians 13:1 )   It is well known that this word "charity" (Greek  agape ) is translated as "love" in most modern translations of the Bible . In fact, even in the King James Version , it is translated "love" more than three times as often as it is rendered by "charity."  One wonders why these scholarly translators of the seventeenth century did not translate agape  by the word "love" here in this very familiar "love chapter," as it has been called. They certainly knew the word did not mean giving to the poor, for they translated verse 3 thus: "And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, . . . and have not charity, it profiteth me nothing." How could anyone exhibit greater charity than to give everything he owns to the poor?   They evide...