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Showing posts from December, 2010

The Gospel According to God

As the counterpoint to my last entry allow me to just remind you of what may be so obvious that we need to be reminded occasionally.  Beyond decorations, beyond trees, beyond cards, beyond presents (which better be bought by now!), beyond frosty and rudolf, there's something real about what happens.  Beyond the exasperation that many believers feel about TV hosts that can only say "happy holidays," and cities that have "holiday trees" instead of "Christmas trees," there is something very real, mysterious and powerful. The Gospel of God is afoot this time of the year.  It lies beneath church pageants we all have- little boys as shepherds, freckle-faced 6 year old girls with tinsel wings as angels, and bearded men as the magi.  It is the most amazing event in all history.  It is the reality that here in this miraculous birth the eternal Word of God, became incarnate as flesh and blood.  Just as remarkable is that this incarnation was for the purpose of

Learning How to Read #6- Alphabet Soup

Buying a Bible used to be pretty simple.  Got to store and decide between leather bound or hard back and put down a few dollars.  Reading it used to be pretty simple as well.  Pick up a Bible and read it and anyone hearing you with their own Bibles would be able to follow along easily.  Of course it's never been quite that simple, but there has been a regular explosion of new translations hitting the bookstores in recent years making the whole idea of buying a Bible an intimidating task.  Look at the shelf or the Christian Book Distributor catalog and you can be lost in the veritable alphabet soup of translations available now.  There's the NASB, NIV and TNIV, the ESV, the RSV and NRSV, the NLT, the JB and NJB, KJV and NKJV, CEV, CEB, HCSB, NEB and REB, the Living Bible, the Message, Good News for Modern Man, and the list goes on.  (In case you're wondering, my own bookshelf only has seven of these.) What I'd like to do now is to at least try to clarify and simplify t

Learning How to Read #5

We draw near the end of this little discourse on how to read scripture.  This post and the next will wrap it up and will deal with the whole matter of languages and translations.  For starters, contrary to what some may think, the Bible was not originally written in King James English.  A funny story illustrates this.  Once some enterprising seminary students took it upon themselves to criticize the translation my New Testament professor used in chapel one day.  To their dismay he showed them what he used- the Greek text itself.  The writers of King James English would put their reaction this way-  "Behold they shutteth their mouth."  Every Bible the average reader picks up is a translation from the original languages in which it was written thousands of years ago.  Nearly the entire Old Testament was written in Hebrew.  This very ancient language is earthy, its words and phrases are picturesque.  For example, the common way of saying "behind," quite literally is