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Bible & Mission

How To Study Bible and Mission

Over the last three years I’ve been involved in helping to develop and teach a module on the Bible and Mission MA at Redcliffe College. With this in mind, I was interested in this quote from the excellent Comprehending Mission by Skreslet.

Indeed, to study the Bible in mission is to be concerned about the scholarly and social processes by which different translations may have come into being. It means paying close attention to the initial reception of these texts and then also the ongoing history of interpretation that follows with respect to multiple audiences. Even the physical form of the translations distributed by the missions deserves examination, since the books themselves were often treated in special ways, if not reverenced as sacred objects. For missiologists, technical studies focused on the biblical languages and social science research on modern translation theory will continue to be important for these discussions  but so will feminist perspectives, anthropological critique and postcolonial scholarship, all of which can shed light on the sometimes unintended and often subtle effects of missionary translation activities.

It’s a bit geeky, but I find it a very thought provoking quote.