We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue.
I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
What translation of the Bible do you use and why?
6 comments:
I was recently given a parallel Bible which has Today's New International Version along side The Message. Prior to this I was using the New International Version. I personally like using a newer translation. I just find it easier to read and helpful if I'm talking to someone who is not so familiar with the Bible. I also like the Message as it puts a different slant on some things which I find quite interesting.
So do you serve un thé avec du lait at the ZZ café? and would you call it, un thé blanc? I know my American friends looked at me quite strangely when I asked for my tea that way!
Susan,
Thanks for your comment. I use the NRSV as I find if to be faithful to the Hebrew and Greek and to be sensitive to gender, without going over the top.
I like the Message for its contemporary punch that can sometimes capture a reader's attention in a new way.
Un thé avec du lait might be unusual for Americans, but you're right at home in the English tea scene. Since ZZ is a Swiss venture we're open to un thé avec du lait, un thé blanc.
I read the ESV, since all the theologians I disagree with believe it to be the best.
Ryan,
Good idea to read against our biases. Those we disagree with can sometimes be our best teachers, although such a reading strategy may at some points fail to be illuminating.
Very true. It seems that the NRSV and the ESV are fairly similar. I suppose I was also tired of the NIV translation of my youth (perhaps language by nature gets tired after a time).
The NRSV sounds interesting – though I’m a little doubtful of the ability to redeem (or reverse) any gender related offenses by the neutering of language (assuming the NRSV attenuates the man-centric language). If so, isn’t this the route of infinite resignation – we will never get gender relations right in this age – so let’s negate them? On the other hand, how I loathe the language of the Complementarians -->shudder<--
Ryan,
Thanks for your comment. Seems to me there is an advantage in using several translations to try to keep, as much as is possible, the language fresh.
Hmm. I suppose that I wouldn't see it as getting it right on gender translation, but getting it better and that's worth an attempt for the sake of the text and its reader.
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