Tag Archives: Humour

It’s Not Rocket Science (But it Might Involve Time Travel)

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Bible Translation really isn’t rocket science. OK, there are lots of tricky technical aspects to it which are far from easy, but the basic principles about why translation needs to happen are quite straightforward. To illustrate this, I’m knicking the whole of a post from Archdruid Eileen, which captures the issue pretty well:

Just a thought, really.

Let’s take the words of Jesus and consider that they would have been spoken in Aramaic, in all likelihood.

Somebody translated that into Greek. And then St Matthew (let’s suppose it’s the Beatitudes we’re talking about here) gathered and maybe regularised the Greek interpretations of what Jesus said on the Mount.

Or if it were the Matthew, maybe he did the translation himself, from the Aramaic in his own memory.

Modern Bible translators take that Greek translation and turn it into English.

Now if you’re King James to the bone, then you’ve got to then make the act of translation from KJV to your own thought-forms. Although, to be fair, if you’re that much of a KJV wallah your thought-forms may well be 17th Century anyway.

And after those 2-3 acts of translation, chances are you’ll still end up with the words “hunger and thirst after righteousness”, or something similar. So if you want to explain that to a non-Christian you’ll need to do another translation step.

It strikes me the options to improve the situation are this, in descending order of utility in accurately understanding the words of our Lord:

1) Invent the Tardis and go back to the 1st Century Middle East, taking everybody you might want to share your faith with, with you.

2) Learn Koine Greek. Better, learn it yourself and then teach it to all your friends.

3) Don’t keep shouting at your friends in KJV English.

4) Try and think of a good way of saying “hunger and thirst after righteousness”.

Books I’ve Read: The Funniest book of the Year

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Just take my word for it; The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared is wonderful. Jonas Jonasson has rewritten the Good Soldier Schweik, made it funnier more surreal and (mercifully) shorter.

The hero of the book has had a full life and was present at most of the major events of the second half of the twentieth century; the Spanish Civil War, the invention of the atom bomb (twice), the Paris riots… You name it, Allan was there. He also comes up with the most ingenious method for killing a gangster that has ever occurred in literature. Nothing I say about this book will do it justice, I laughed and laughed as I read it. I’ve not enjoyed a comic novel so much since I first read Wodehouse thirty something years ago.

I realise that humour is subjective and that not everyone will enjoy this book as much as I did, but then again it only costs 20p for your Kindle. What can go wrong?

A Gross Generalisation about Denominations

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Free Church people sing better than Anglicans, but Anglicans do responsive readings and prayers better than Free Church people.

This is not a value judgement, just a simple observation from spending the last few years visiting a many, many different churches. There are some exceptions to the rule, but not many.

Bible and Mission Links 23

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Resources

One of the most useful sites relating to the Bible and Mission is Rob Bradshaw’s Biblicalstudies.org.uk, where a massive amount of biblical and theological material is available to download. Rob has put a vast amount of time and energy into gathering together this archive and it is well worth taking some time to peruse it. The World Evangelical Alliance also have a huge number of mission related articles, books and such like available for download.

Partnerships

The BBC’s man in Africa, John James has a fascinating observation about the way in which expats can be cut off from the life of the country in which they live. Sadly, much of what he has to say could, in my experience, also be applied to missionaries. In a thoughtful piece, David Westlake examines some of the dangers inherent in (well intentioned) Western interventions in the wider world.

In development work rich, educated, powerful and well-intentioned people make up plans orsolutions for people who have less formal education, money and power. Programmes and projects that might have worked well in one place are implemented in other places without much regard to the different local circumstances. Local “partners” become programme contractors rather than collaborators and learning is adopted rather than adapted. The result is disempowerment and weak ownership even if there are some good outputs. It is not sustainable, does not create local civil society and dis-honours people.

It’s not all doom and gloom – he does have a solution, but you’ll need to read the article to find it.

Bible Translation

The Wycliffe Global Alliance website has a heart-warming story from Guatemala. Again, you’ll need to read the whole article!

Overwhelmed with emotion, José Alberto takes off his hat and buries his face in it as he weeps. The chapeau becomes a handkerchief, of sorts, to absorb his tears.

Jose is recalling one of the darkest periods of his life—when it should have been one of the brightest—as a pastor among the Central Mam people of northwestern Guatemala.

It was a time when his little congregation in the village of Tuijala dismissed him as their pastor—for preaching the truth.

Phil has posted some excellent videos which give the rationale for Bible translation work – go on, watch them.

Mission in the West

Andrew Jones has been musing on the work of a New Zealand missiologist and his contribution to mission in his own context. While David Fitch has produced a list of issues which must be addressed by the Church in its mission to North America.

The gospel. What is the gospel? Is it only justification by faith or does justification fit within a larger framework, the good news that God has made Jesus both Savior and Lord and is ushering in His Kingdom? …

The Scripture as God’s Drama, His Story. How does a high view of the authority of Scriptures translate in a context where science and historiography no longer (and maybe never should have) hold sway as the standards of truth and accuracy? …

The church in Mission. What defines God’s people and how do we organize for mission. …

Salvation and Justice as Related. Again, we are confronted with injustice in our society in situations too numerous and confusing to list here. …

Women In Ministry. Here again is an important issue in our time. But this issue gets polarized with two options that do not seem to get at the heart of what is happening in the New Testament. …

LGBTQ. The alternative sexualities of our society are a dominant issue we are facing culturally and in our churches. But everyone is afraid to talk about it for fear of being branded as extreme by either side of the spectrum. …

It would be interesting to reflect on each of these, but this isn’t the place. However, I’ll restrict myself to the issue of sexuality which has become a major talking point in the UK following an interview in which the well known preacher, Vaughan Roberts admitted to ‘same sex attraction.  Mark Meynell wrote an excellent blog post which addressed the issue very well. A few days later, Mark summarised some of the themes in his blog post for a piece on the Guardian website.

Besides, the real Christian objection is much deeper. We don’t believe desire is a reliable guide in life. Sometimes it leads us to what is true and good. Sometimes it flickers and deceives. Instead, Christianity offers a far more radical proposition: we are not defined by the things we want or own. So we are not defined by our sexuality, social status, wealth, education, looks or even by which newspaper we read. Instead, we are defined by two key things: that we are each created in God’s image, and that in Christ we are redeemed by God’s astonishing love. It is on this foundation that we can surely move beyond a battle of derogatory stereotypes to a real discussion of what it means to be human.

Varia

It wouldn’t be one of my lists of links without a reference to the Beaker Folk who have a series of small ads:

Are you a supernaturally gifted preacher, pastor, children’s worker and administrator? Can you stop time, thus fitting more hours into the week than anyone else? Do you hear “Sabbath” and think “Five hours’ sleep a night is enough for anyone”?  Are you able to raise large amounts of money, apparently effortlessly and without all those fraud charges the last minister had to endure? If so, please contact us for our Parish Profile.  Now we’ve written it, it turns out you’re just the person we’re looking for!

Jesus’ Wife

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A few days ago, a Harvard Professor announced that he had found a papyrus which indicated that some early Christians believed that Jesus was married. Now, I’m not expert enough in the field to make any serious comment on the validity or otherwise of these claims, but this episode illustrates a few important truths from the Christian blogsphere.

Whenever some new claim of this sort is made:

James McGrath will respond relatively quickly to the issue and will provide links to lots of sources of discussion.

Mark Goodacre will be a little slower to comment, but will also make some well balanced comments.

Archdruid Eileen will almost certainly have something funny to say about the situation and may also have some wise comments, too (the funny and wise may well be combined in one post).

If Simon Cozens decides to blog on the issue (and that is a rare event) he will say something that really makes you think.

I’ll leave the last word to the good Archdruid.

So here’s my thesis – radical it might be. But I’m going to stick my neck out here.

Based on four Gospels (five, if you include Thomas) and the rest of the New Testament and other early writings, and on the general agreement of those parts of the Church that had no vested interest in trying to synthesise the Apostolic tradition with Greek philosophy – I propose:

  • That Jesus was probably not married (though it wouldn’t matter all that much if he did, as it wasn’t a sin),
  • That he never went to India, nor Glastonbury.
  • That he had twelve close apostles – none of whom, as far as we can tell, were female or gay lovers of his. He had lots of other disciples – men and women.
  • That one of his apostles betrayed him to an alliance of the Romans and the Jewish leaders.
  • That he died, and was buried.
  • That on the third day, he rose from the dead.
  • That all the graves in the Palestinian territories and Israel marked “Jesus” are other people
  • That he didn’t leave any living descendants (although it wouldn’t matter much if he had – as he had totally normal human DNA).
  • That the church went and preached much of what I’d said above.
  • That the Gnostics made stuff up to try and fit Jesus into other philosophies. Because they were so odd, and because the tradition said otherwise, they didn’t last.

Bible and Mission Links 22

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Bible Translation

Philip Hewer has a rather nice blog post exploring the disappearing vocative ‘o’, while Pastors.com pays homage to ‘Good News for Modern Man‘.

Those with a historical interest can read about Baptists and the Bible and there are more materials about the Bible than most of us will ever read available from John Frame and Vern Poythress here.

I rather like this video about the need for Bible translation worldwide.

Answer the Call from Pioneer Bible Translators on Vimeo.

Power and Prestige

in a provocative article, David Fitch suggests that students starting seminary in the US have the choice of being a megachurch pastor or a missionary.

Onesimus had come back to life and still asking questions about the way in which Western theology seems to dominate in Africa:

There are very few theology books that appropriately engage African (Ethiopian and Kenyan, in my experience) students.  Most are written from a Western perspective and are dealing with western intellectual issues that are remote from and irrelevant to the African churches.  Even those written by Africans are written by those who have been trained in Western contexts or with Western assumptions (as most of them have been trained in Western schools).  We missionaries are keen on passing on our faith, but we usually end up passing on a theological perspective that may actually impede genuine faith and engagement with the local context here.  That may be fine in a Nairobi mega church where everyone is assiduously trying to be Western.  But the shortcomings of the African churches across the spectrum can be traced to the mismatch of missionary/Western theology and the realities on the ground.
Mark Woodward wants to know ‘Who are the Poor in Spirit?’

It is striking to me how our unspoken attitudes in Christian mission today can be similar to those of the Pharisees. In our approach to mission are we subtly (or not so subtly) communicating that the people around us are spiritually poor, and that we have all the answers and are spiritually rich? In an article in the MissionFrontiers journal, Greg Parsons suggests that

Like it or not, perhaps without realizing it, we actually do think we are superior… If we’re honest, we in the English-speaking world feel particularly proud of the massive biblical resources available in our language, some of which is actually helpful. Add to this our emphasis on (and experience in) explaining the Bible and it’s not surprising that people see us as teachers rather than learners. We have all the answers!

While there is certainly a place for teaching in Christian mission and the life of the church, I think we have to be careful of making the same mistake as the Pharisees, who equated knowledge of their teachings with spiritual wealth. I’m not sure exactly what Jesus meant when he said that the poor in spirit were blessed, but maybe he was hinting that his kingdom is more about humbly coming to him, and pointing others to him, than it is about knowing the right answers and feeling in some way superior to those who don’t know this truth.

Varia

Antony Billington points us to the latest edition of Mission Frontiers and Tim Chester has been working his way through Roy Joslin’s book Urban Harvest:

The fact that the form of worship in urban, suburban, coastal and rural churches shows little if any variation strongly suggests that the matter of worship and culture is a neglected area of Christian thought. If, as seems probable, the practice of worship in our urban churches appears to reflect a culture that is other than urban, then this is an area of Christian living where reformation is required. (305)

And to close, Tim Tillinghast has written a couple of brilliant posts which catch the experience of missionary life in West Africa beautifully! (1, 2)

Here follows one of the darkest plumbing nightmares I have experienced. It was a Monday as I recall, and the day started simply enough. I did some language analysis and then had a language lesson, made some trips into town for some errands, and was back home by 3:00 and was sitting at my desk working away on language study, when nature called – rather urgently, I recall. I made use of my front bathroom.
Before I proceed much further, I must pause to note that I am fortunate to have not one, but two toilets in my house. My colleagues moved into a house that had two Turkish toilets, which are nice porcelain structures that flush, but are missing one crucial feature – a seat. You put your feet on two raised porcelain steps and squat down. When my friends moved into their house, they asked the landlord to fix several broken things and added that they would like to have a sit-down toilet. He replied that he would repair what was broken and paint the place, but that they would have to pay for any “fantasies”  (like toilets). Thus, I feel honored to have two fantasies in my house
.

Bible and Mission Links 21

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It’s been a while since my last update of all things Bible and mission floating around the internet, so there is a fair bit to mention this time round.

Bible Translation

Coming from a secularised western society, I find it difficult to get my mind around concepts such as witchcraft and sorcery. However, this is something that Bible translators cannot ignore; the Bible has a fair bit to say on the subject and many languages have very complex ways of addressing it. The complexity of this issue is a great illustration of the  simple fact that not just anyone can be a Bible translator. The Huffington Post has an interesting background piece on myths about translation.

English Bibles

Tim asks the not unreasonable question of why we need so many versions of the Bible in English while Joel asks how our favourite Bible translations measure up. I am constantly amazed at the new and rather odd editions of the Bible which are produced in the US. If this review is at all accurate, I won’t be hurrying out to buy a copy of the Founders’ Bible at any time soon, but I might be tempted to buy a copy of the Mission of God Study Bible.

βλογάπη (great name for a website) has a fascinating link to a piece which evaluates the historical impact of the KJV.

Cross-Cultural Mission

Mark Woodward picked up on my links to Mark Meynel’s blog (the Two Marks of Mission?) and wrote an excellent piece which is well worth quoting:

What would it mean for us to make strategic decisions based on a study of God’s mission throughout the Bible? Or what Jesus had to say about poverty and wealth? As we are working across cultures and in multi-ethnic teams, what can we learn from Paul’s New Testament letters as he continually battles with a multi-racial church, with vastly different cultures, histories and traditional beliefs, that he insists has been united in Christ? How might we plan our work in a post-colonial and globalised world in light of the Bible’s interaction with the major themes of empire and oppression? Or slavery and (both geographical and spiritual) exile? How might the biblical approaches to suffering and persecution inform our decisions? Or the experiences of communities in the Bible as they live as ethnic minorities, with their culture and identity under threat from every side? What can we learn from Jesus about how to announce a kingdom that is putting everything right, but starts out as a small seed that falls to the ground?

I think at times we can be afraid to discuss these things in a corporate setting (particularly those of us working in an inter-denominational environment), as we are afraid to disagree. But again I think this fear stems from the modern insistence that there is only one right answer, and that we must decide on it together. Maybe the truth is that it’s only actually as diverse but united believers, wrestling with these huge issues and humbly stepping forward in faith, that we begin to draw closer to God and appreciate more of what he is doing in his world.

Jonathan Martin writes about a controversy which has convulsed parts of the American Christian blogsphere, but does so from a perspective of the world Church. What he has to say puts a lot of our current theological questions into perspective:

The average Christian in the world right now is an African or Latin American female in her early 20’s.  She doesn’t read our blogs and she doesn’t readChristianity Today.  She doesn’t know or care who I am and she never will.  The names Piper, Driscoll, Chan, Bell, Stanley, Warren—mean nothing to her.  Like most Pentecostal women coming into the kingdom around the world, words like “complementarian” and “egalitarian” are not in her vocabulary, nor Calvinism and Arminianism.  Unlike some of my brothers would lead you believe (where their lunch table is the only one that cares about Scripture and THE GOSPEL while anybody who believes differently from them in these tired conversations are flaming liberals), she takes the authority of the Bible very seriously.  But more importantly, she believes in the power of the Bible in ways that are incomprehensible even for our most rabid “conservatives.”  The western filter and language that frames these issues will not be determinative for her, unlucky as she is not to read our blogs.  She may well in end up leading a church one day where she preaches Jesus like a woman on fire and lays hands on the sick and watches God heal them, though this will surprise those Reformed colleagues who are sure all female church leaders have been trained by godless-Unitarian-lesbian-leftist-radical feminist-seminarians (she didn’t have access to seminary at all–unfortunately she has read the Acts of the Apostles).  Who knew?

The world has moved on, God has moved on, and we didn’t even notice.

Resources

There is a fascinating pieceon the Affinity website about reaching post-modern youth who come from an Eastern-Orthodox background. Thanks to Tim for pointing out that  Thomas Shcirrmacher’s collection of essays,  World Mission: Heart of Christianity, is available as a free pdf download. I’ve only just started reading this, but it seems very good so far. Ben has linked to some fascinating maps which look at the way in which religious believers have migrated around the world and Mez has reviewed one of the best books I know on Christian social involvement.

Varia

The Beaker Folk have posted an excellent guide to evaluating mission initiatives:

From the Beaker FOlk

 While the Opinionated Vicar has a great illustration of discipleship:

Bible and Mission Links 20

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For those who follow these things, I have changed the sea bird photograph that I’m using for this series. There is no significance behind the change or my choice of photo, but I though I’d mention it.

Over the last few weeks Antony Billington has been blogging up a storm and has linked to lots of good resources including:

Bible Translation

There have been a few recent blog posts setting out reasons why Bible translation is important for the Church.

The Seed Company blog has a good article setting out a justification for Bible translation. Itbuilds on the work of Lamin Sanneh and Andrew Walls. Regular readers of Kouya Chronicle will have seen much of this before, but as a summary of some current thinking it is worth a look:

Joel Hoffman has written a fascinating little post on the problem of translating directions in the Bible. Who would have imagined that a simple word like ‘south’ could be so problematic?

There are lots of blog posts written about theories and models of Bible translation, most of which are not written by translators – and it shows. As a general rule, if anyone writes something along these lines “there are two main theories of Bible translation; dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence”, they almost certainly don’t know what they are talking about! If you want to get a good overview of the various ideas about Bible translation and you would like to place them in some sort of context, this article would be a good place to start. (HT katadrew)

Nathan has written an excellent article on the problem of choosing the best Bible translation in English.

 This is unacceptable. The English language has plenty of translations to choose from. There shouldn’t be the thought of another translation project in our language until we cut the number of languages with no Bibles in half! And even then it probably wouldn’t be necessary to start another English language translation project. It’s amazing that the KJV has lasted so long with its thees and thous. People still use the KJV as their translation of choice. If the KJV could last so long, couldn’t our modern translations like the NIV or the HCSB tide us over for a while so that we can get as many resources over to these other countries that have nothing?

This piece asks some hard questions, while finishing on a heart warming note:

I had a professor once who is from the Miso people, who live in a remote part of northeast India.  He told us how, when he was a child, missionaries came to his village.  The Miso people had no written language.  The missionaries reduced the Miso language to writing, in part motivated by a desire to produce Miso-language Bibles.  They also established a school, the first his village had ever had.  Thanks to those missionaries my professor went on ultimately to get a Ph.D. from Princeton.  He told us that the most amazing thing he discovered when he came to America was the pervasive negative impression of Christians.  All he had ever known of Christians was goodness, love and self-sacrifice.

Missionary Life

Picking up on the previous link, my friend Ed Lauber has a fascinating story about some of the challenges he faced as a missionary in West Africa. Mark has some provocative thoughts on the current economic crisis which are informed by his experience of living in Africa:

As European news is filled with dread about the economic situation on a daily basis, I wonder if in fact the crisis is more a crisis of belief in an economic system, a paradigm where the golden rule is that we all act selfishly in the belief that this will bring prosperity and happiness to all. A system where we who are rich just look after ourselves, getting richer while at the same time believing that our greed is actually helping the poor too. A system where we feel we have the right to ever-increasing wealth, turning a blind eye to those who don’t seem to be benefiting in the same way that we are.

The Gospel Coalition challenges to consider cancelling our short term mission trips, while Nathan gives seven good reasons to support missionaries (if you need a missionary to support, you could always start with us!).
Meanwhile, Jamie has some brilliant observations on the subject of being a missionary:

We’ve watched our friends meet other missionaries and noticed that sometimes when they hear that word, something weird happens. We’ve seen couples who are simply living together suddenly become husband and wife, foul mouthed jocks suddenly wax eloquent, beer aficionados become teetotalers for the moment, and raunchy stories about what happened last Friday night get tabled for another time.

In my experience, it seems the only people who feel excited to cross paths with a missionary are other missionaries, and people who feel a religious kinship with missionaries.

Theology-ish

Recently, I was amused see someone on twitter talking about the differences between Africa and Europe, when their whole experience of Africa was one trip to Nairobi. Africa is a huge and highly diverse continent and to think that you know about it after one trip to Nairobi is a bit like assuming that you know about Europe on the basis of one visit to Copenhagen. In a similar vein, this short article tries to get to grips with ‘African theology’. It’s a good place to start, but it is no more than a start!

The Bible and Mission Blog points us to an excellent resource from Chris Wright and there is an excellent piece from an Australian journal on heart language worship in multi-cultural contexts.

Brian has posted lots of good and thoughtful stuff over the past few weeks. There is too much for me to link to everything, so just head over to his blog and have a read.

For those interested in witness and ministry among Muslims, there is an absolutely excellent, and very challenging paper in the latest edition of IJFM.

You cannot carry the gospel to the Muslim world today without having a clear and well-articulated opinion on the Palestinian tragedy, on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and on US global military involvement and its offensive neo-colonial support for autocratic regimes and dictators to guard its own economic interests.

Lastly, I’ve not linked to a cartoon by Dave Walker for a while, but this one is well worth a look!

This CartoonChurch.com cartoon by Dave Walker originally appeared in the Church Times.

Translation or Evolution

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We often get asked why we don’t use Google translate or some other online tool to do Bible translation. Well, the simple answer is that they are just not good enough! Take this example…

Our friend Jane recently posted a nice piece about the Kouya translation and our friend Didier on her blog. Jane, lives in Switzerland and writes for a francophone audience, so the piece is is French – no surprise there! However, what is surprising is the way in which the Bing online translation service rendered Jane’s nice prose!

Ma collègue Wycliffe et amie, Sue, qui était impliquée dans l’équipe de traduction kouya, m’a raconté l’histoire de Didier, un des prinicpaux traducteurs kouya.

Became

“My colleague Wycliffe and friend, Sue, who was involved in the translation chimpanzee team, told me the story of Didier, one of the key translators chimpanzee.”

And that, ladies and gentlemen is why machine translation is not adequate for the Bible!

For a more detailed look at this question, try this post.

The Gods of Christmas

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With the brilliant mixture of humour and insight which makes the Beaker Folk blog absolutely unique, Eileen has written about the God’s of Christmas.

He’s a fairly useless god, is Santa. He builds up your hopes till Christmas Eve and then, like the hopes of snow in early December, he melts in the misty drizzle of an unseasonably warm Christmas morning. He is flattened by the on-rush of the worshippers of the great god New Year Sales, as they head for the websites after dinner on Christmas day.

And leaves another god in his wake. A little, quiet, unassuming one who sneaks in on Christmas Eve, unable even to speak at this stage, while everyone’s down the pub. Who isn’t embarrassed by his image deflating on people’s lawns in the run-down to Twelfth Night. Because he’s used to being ignored and forgotten, laughed at and jeered at – beaten and bruised. He sneaks in while we’re looking at big, bright, red Santa. But if you’re not careful he can stay well beyond Boxing Day.

Now go and read the whole piece.