Scripture Engagement

The language we use to refer to projects matters. It's well known that referring to a project as 'my project' is not a good idea, for instance. Or 'my language' meaning the language you are learning and working on. Equally problematic is talking about Bible translation as if it is the be-all-and-end-all. For instance, "So and so is just doing storying, but his friend so and so is doing proper Bible translation!" This does not communicate what we want it to communicate. It communicates that Bible translation is the real job, what actually matters, and storying is in some way inferior. Whereas in fact storying, or whatever, might be the most appropriate strategy for the audience in question. And it might lead to a Bible translation programme of some sort. Also, we often refer to New Testaments as Bibles. Strange. Why do we do that? Because that was the traditional goal of many Bible translation programmes. They were working on a 'full New Testament

And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn . Luke 2:7 KJV https://bible.com/bible/1/luk.2.7.KJV (emphasis mine) It wasn't an inn! There was no room in the guest room. First century houses in Palestine had a courtyard, rooms for the animals  in the ground floor, and two rooms above or next to those, one for the family and one for  guests. Since Bethlehem was full of relatives, there was no room for Joseph and Mary to stay in the guest room, so they  had to sleep on the ground floor with the animals. The unfortunate thing is that a mistranslation of the Greek in an early English version paved the way for future misunderstanding. The Greek word is (UBS4): καταλύματι, 'lodging place, guest room' in Luke 2:7.

The good thing about working as an exegete and translation adviser with translators is that you don't have to solve all the exegetical problems: Numbers in the Old Testament Whether manna was light blue or a kind of whitish colour Who wrote the books of the Bible Whether or not there were different 'sources' of a given book etc. We simply translate what is there and leave others to sort the problems out 😄. But , and it is a big but, there are problems we do need to solve: What 'righteousness' means in the Old Testament, and in Romans/Galatians (actually it's more about how the respective Hebrew and Greek terms sadaqah and dikaiosune are used ) What does 'the righteousness of God' mean? Is it God's righteousness (as in his honour), or the moral righteousness i.e. innocence he imparts to us? What does 'lord' mean when it refers to Jesus in any given instance? LORD God? Or lord/sir? Why was a given verse/passage/book written? W

There is a growing trend in the UK church to equate mission with local evangelism. This worries me for several reasons: It seems to me that God's mission is much broader than evangelism, in that it includes liberating the poor i.e. the whole socio-economic side of mission is left out if we reduce it to evangelism. Exodus. On top of that it ignores the environmental side of God's mission - green ethics. Genesis 1-2. It forgets what is probably the main thing - God's mission is to the nations. That was the whole point of Abraham's calling (the beginning of God' redemptive story). Genesis 12. If we reduce mission to local evangelism we are back to the divide that used to exist between spiritual and physical dimensions (materialism), between one nation and another (nationalism), and between us and the rest of God's creation (anthropocentrism).  As Chris Wright has pointed out, it's not that God has a mission for the church in the world, it's tha

Often we talk about being 'in God's house' on a Sunday morning. What does the Bible mean when it talks about God's house? In the Old Testament it refers to: Bethel, 'the house of God', a place where Jacob met with God in a dream, and God spoke to Jacob and renewed the covenant he had made with Abraham with him Gen 28:10-22. This place is mentioned frequently throughout the rest of the Old Testament The house built in Shiloh to house the ark of the covenant Jdg 18:31. It may just have been a tent, like the tabernacle, we don't really know, but we do know that the ark was kept in the most holy place, where God's presence was powerfully experienced The temple 1Ki 5; 1Ch 6:48 often referred to as 'the house for Yahweh [the LORD]' rather than 'God's house' 1Ki 6:1, and it was filled with a cloud representing Yahweh's presence 1Ki 8:10, though this wasn't actually where Yahweh lived, as the whole of heaven cannot contain h

Not much has been thought about Scripture Engagement research. There are two types: Research before starting S.E. work Research to find out how well existing published Scriptures (often print New Testaments) are being used I will focus on the former. It's very tempting to dive into making Scripture Engagement products without really thinking through what the needs are, what works and what doesn't, and what people are likely to respond to. Here are some ideas: Find out whether the culture is honour-shame, power-fear, or purity-pollution. This will help you know how to frame the good news in such a way that people will light up in understanding, assuming the Holy Spirit is at work in their lives. To do that one tool is the culture test , though it doesn't cover purity-pollution as a paradigm Read Wayne Dye's article on the Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement, then fill out a questionnaire based on that article. Give each condition a rating, then work

It's true - Arts flies the good news under people's radar screen. It's a great way of reaching people's hearts. There are lots of stories that corroborate this. In Asia there was one group that had one hundred hymns translated into their language, but the church was dwindling and few sung the hymns with enthusiasm. Some well-meaning mission workers had had these hymns translated some decades earlier, but the tunes were Western. In came some ethnomusicologists / ethnodoxologists and helped the local people work out which instruments could be used in a worship context, and then helped them write songs which used their own style of music. These songs were so popular that the church moved out of the building and into the village, and many many others started joining in with the worship times! Eventually there were a group of musicians writing songs and leading worship in their community, and the church continued to grow. This is just one of many stories I could share.

A lot of our work these days is with unreached people groups: those, often smaller groups that have very few believers, and no viable church (i.e. gatherings of believers). If they do have meetings they are often in homes, and might even be persecuted - raided as in the days of Pastor Wurmbrand and Brother Andrew. Since there is no viable church it is difficult, sometimes, to know how to get going in Scripture engagement work, including translation. Probably the ideal is to have some mission workers involved, and work alongside them. If they aren't available or can't be found then, or even so, a good way forward is oral storying, or producing audio and video series based on Scripture. Either way you need to design a story set. This is a set of stories that fulfils two criteria: It covers the main points of the Bible (not just the New Testament) such as creation, fall, the calling of Abraham, Abraham and Isaac and the ram that God provides as a sacrifice, the life of Moses,

It seems to me that we spend a lot of time talking about partnership, but sometimes our language betrays our true affiliation. We feel we belong to one organisation, and work in partnership with another, but can easily say things like: 'That's not our project it belongs to <organisation name>.' Or: 'We don't have any personnel in that project, apart from a consultant who visits regularly.' (!) If <organisation name> is a partner organisation, in what sense is it not 'our' project (in the collective sense of the word)? And if we have a consultant giving advice to that project and approving their translations for publication, how are we not involved? Partnership is one of the Eight Conditions , albeit the last (but not the least). It is only in last place because Wayne Dye added it after the other conditions, and in a sense it holds all of them together. Without partnership our efforts are in vain. In any case the true owners of

We often talk about the birth of the church at Pentecost as a completely new beginning. But was it? The event happened in Jerusalem, and the early believers often went to prayers at the temple or met in the temple portico. They were Jews, albeit from a variety of places.  Most of them only left Jerusalem as a result of persecution and a prophecy (Act 1:8). The fact that the early believers,   including leaders were Jews, means that as well as a new start we need to talk about continuity: The same people The same customs The same location Mostly the same beliefs When new churches are planted today there will be some continuity with the past. We shouldn't be afraid of that. Much of it is good, as it keeps people where they should be, in their communities. The new thing we want to introduce is 'the word of the Lord' i.e. the good news that Jesus the Messiah is Lord (and God). The rest is not unimportant, in fact it might be very useful background to this message, bu

It's popular these days to say that all of us are addicted to something, in some small way. I hear some people talking about those with 'addictive personalities' too. I'm afraid I don't know much about these things from a sociological or psychological perspective (ask my daughter), but I can say this, there are many people in the world addicted to alcohol or drugs (I suppose the former is actually something to do with the latter), and they need help. My burden is to help those in Central Asia who are addicted to heroin. How can we address this issue? What I have noticed, is this: Heroin and opium are much cheaper and more easily available in Central Asia than in some other parts of the world Because of the collectivist culture where there is a desire to gain social capital and stay connected with one's extended family, if someone becomes a narkoman (drug addict) their family will frequently hide them away, and then provide them with the drug to avoid shame

The very first believer from one Central Asian group we worked with said that it wasn't possible to pray or preach in his mother tongue. 'Our language is too poor, it doesn't have the right vocabulary for prayer or preaching. How would you even say the word "prayer" in our language? The word " doga " means "charm" as well as "prayer". We couldn't possibly use that word in church! We should use Russian, which is a rich language and has all the right words for these things!' This is a very common response when people first become believers. They see their own language as inappropriate for use in worship. This is because what they see as 'Christianity' is being modelled in a language of wider communication like English, French, Russian, Urdu or Classical Arabic. To use a more local language seems like a step down to something too basic for spiritual use. In the end a whole bunch of young men became believers, and the

Media products often end with the resurrection. Why? We just want to get people saved. This is the wrong strategy, imho . We are commanded to make disciples. People need the message of Acts. Some people need to be able to see the road ahead before completely committing themselves to Christ. Acts teaches us that: God is at work! The Holy Spirit who came after Jesus ascended to heaven, works through us Where there are no churches planting new ones is needed  Those churches are missional in nature, i.e. self-reproducing Local believers are the ones to lead those gatherings We may encounter persecution Some areas have people who are more open to the good news than others Many Jewish leaders had misunderstood the Bible and what it taught about the coming chosen one Nevertheless many Jewish background as well as Gentile background people believed, so churches were often made up of both, often causing some tension It's about growing, discipleship, and moving forward as a b

This is a controversial topic for some! There are those who think that only pianos and organs are appropriate for worship. Others are OK with drums, electric guitars and so on. What does the Bible have to say? Instruments used in the Bible Some instruments were used for false worship: 'Therefore, as soon as they heard the sound of the horn, flute, zither, lyre, harp and all kinds of music, all the nations and peoples of every language fell down and worshiped the image of gold that King Nebuchadnezzar had set up.' Daniel 3:7 'They have harps and lyres at their banquets,            pipes and timbrels and wine,   but they have no regard for the deeds of the LORD,           no respect for the work of his hands.' Isa 5:12 Some for true worship:       Praise him with the sounding of the trumpet ,              praise him with the harp and lyre ,        praise him with timbrel and dancing ,              praise him with the strings and pipe ,   

In Katy Barnwell's 'Ten Ways to Test a Translation' we are advised not to ask any questions that ask for the opinions of the hearer, only factual questions should be asked. Certainly we don't want to ask, 'Is this a good translation?' Nor do we want to ask, 'What do you think of the translation?' We might, however, want to ask, 'Why, in your view, did Jonah run away from the Lord?' when testing Jonah 1. This is because it finds out if the hearer has understood the main point of the plot in chapter 1, despite the fact that this is only implied, not openly stated. Jonah is running away from the Lord because Nineveh is a major Babylonian (Iraqi) city full of non-Jews who might want to kill him. Not only that, we later find out that Jonah doesn't even want the Ninevites to repent. His view is that they deserve punishment simply for being non-Jews, and therefore non-believers. He is falling into the religious trap of being judgmental, like the ol

The relationship between Bible Translation, Scripture Engagement, and Missiology can be seen as a Venn diagram with quite some overlap: The relationship between some of these is fairly obvious (SE and Missiology, especially), and I will come back to the relationship between Translation and Missiology another time. In addition we also talk about 'Language and Development'. Without language we would not need to translate, nor would we be able to express our trust in God, or desire to share him with our neighbours. So, language and its development (and general development of a minority people), is key. Our actual activities, however, are often more to do with translation and Scripture engagement, depending, where we work, and what the needs are. Our goal is not to create languages, but to create Scripture access. Our goals might include developing bilingual education programmes, but the greater goal is Kingdom growth (via bilingual Bible apps and in other ways). The language

Bibliography Barnwell, K. (2002) Bible Translation: An Introductory Course in Translation Principles. 4th edn. Dallas: SIL International. Dye, W. (2009) ‘The Eight Conditions of Scripture Engagement’, 26(2). Available at: http://www.ijfm.org/PDFs_IJFM/26_2_PDFs/89-98_Eight%20Conditions.pdf (Accessed: 2 May 2018). Gutt, E.-A. (2000) Translation and Relevance - Cognition and Context. Manchester: St Jerome. Hill, H. et al. (2011) Bible Translation Basics. Dallas: SIL International. Hill, H. and Hill, M. (2008) Translation the Bible into Action. Carlisle: Piquant Press. Sperber, Dan, and Deirdre Wilson (1995) Relevance: Communication and Cognition. Oxford: Blackwell. Wilt, T. (ed.) (2003) Bible Translation - Frames of Reference. Manchester: St Jerome. Useful Links Websites you may like to look at for further information: Bible Gateway https://www.biblegateway.com/ Bible Society (UK) https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/ SIL https://www.si

The decision to move to a more open model of work wasn’t just taken for pragmatic reasons. Missions in general have been realising that we need to move away from colonial approaches, where the foreigners are in control, and away from post-colonial approaches, where the foreigners feel guilty that they are even involved in the work. In these days of globalisation, we can all be involved without anyone feeling guilty or misused in any way. Post-colonial approaches have affected many areas of academic study, including translation. We now realise that languages can be used to adversely influence people (colonialism), and that translators are more than linguists, they are cross-cultural intermediaries (post-colonial approaches and globalisation). For instance, if an interpreter hears something that they consider might be insulting to those they are interpreting for, they might modify what they say and tone it down a bit to make it more acceptable. On top of that we know that the cultures w

The major push that occurred in the 19 th century resulted in mission work and Bible translation beginning in many fairly major languages, but it was not until the 20 th century that smaller groups and minority languages were considered a need. It has only been in the last one hundred years ago that phrases like ‘every tribe, every nation, every language’ were used to call workers and others into mission work and partnership in it. Cameron Townsend, the founder of Wycliffe Bible Translators, actually began in the 1930s by starting a training programme called ‘The Summer Institute of Linguistics’, to equip those already studying linguistics at university to analyse an unwritten language from first principles. The early recruits went to Mexico, where they researched and analysed the indigenous languages such as Nahuatl and Mixtec. They lived in villages, worked with ‘language informants’, as they were then known, and produced phonology write-ups, grammars, dictionaries, primers

During the 17 th and 18 th centuries some Bible translation was carried out in non-European languages, but the main movement forward was in the 19 th century. William Carey, of the Baptist Missionary Society, and known as the father of modern missions, began translation work in Hindi and Urdu, and later this was completed by Henry Martyn, the complete Bible being published in 1843. Henry Martyn was a prolific translator, working with local colleagues, and translating the Bible into several languages: Hindi/Urdu, Persian (Farsi), and Judaeo-Persian. Urdu is an artificial language based on Hindi grammar with many Persian and some Turkic loan words. It was needed by the Moghul hordes from Central Asia who invaded Northern India and built and empire resulting in edifices such as the Taj Mahal. [1] Martyn passed away [2] aged only thirty-one. It’s extraordinary to think that he achieved more before the age of thirty than most of us do in a lifetime. There were many other translat

There were other translations carried out during the Reformation period. The Bible was translated into Slovene during the 16 th century, and into Turkish during the 17 th century, albeit by a Polish convert to Islam who called himself Ali Bey after his conversion. [1] The result of all this translation activity – and I haven’t covered all languages translated in the reformation period – was that as Christians started to spread around the world as the result of persecution or to trade they took Bibles with them, and began churches, albeit in their language. So, the gospel began to reach parts of the world outside Europe such as North America, where many Puritans, both Reformed and Anabaptist, planted churches. This paved the way for the modern missions movement, which has tended to focus on Bible distribution, for very important reasons. Church planters and bible translators are often either the same people, or very closely related to one another i.e. working in close partnersh

The reformation really got going when Erasmus began a new translation of the Bible into Latin, based on Hebrew and Greek. He decided to produce a ‘definitive’ Greek text, now known as the Textus Receptus or ‘Received Text’. When Luther saw this, he said to himself, ‘If it’s ok to produce a fresh translation of the Bible into Latin, why not go the whole hog and translate one from Greek (and Hebrew) into German?’ And so the reformation begun. Within a few years Bibles were being translated into a number of European languages. William Tyndale, another Oxford linguist and theologian, began an English version of the New Testament, again working from Greek manuscripts, and within a century this was reworked by a committee commissioned by King James 1 st into what we now know as ‘The Authorised Version’ or ‘The King James Version’, also using Coverdale’s edition of the Bible that included the Old Testament. [1] Many of these translators were, or became, leaders in the reformation, and fo

Some of you may be surprised to learn that the King James Version of the Bible wasn’t the first Bible translation. Apart from the translation of the Old Testament into Greek, mentioned above, there are many other versions of the Bible: The Samaritan Pentateuch – this contains the first five books of the Old Testament. The Samaritans only took these books as part of their canon. They also had Damascus as their capital and worship-centres in Dan and Bethel for many years, and were considered a sect by Jews. The Samaritan Pentateuch is not a translation, as such, but an important text, in that it duplicates the ‘Torah’ – the teaching part of the Hebrew Bible. The Dead Sea Scrolls – also not a translation, but an important collection of Hebrew texts, dating back to the 1 st century BC. The scrolls were found in a cave in Qumran, so are sometimes known by that epithet. They were remarkably well preserved, given the fact they had been lying there for about twenty centuries before

In the fourth century BC a king called Ptolemy the 2 nd decided it would be a good idea to get the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek. He, as the story goes, appointed seventy translators who were told to sit in separate booths and work alone, and at the end of the process all seventy miraculously produced identical translations of the Hebrew Bible. What a way to check for accuracy! [1] This translation became known as the Septuagint , and is one of the most reliable texts of the Old Testament we have, along with the Masoretic Text (10 th century AD), and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1 st century BC). Sometimes the Dead Sea Scrolls line up with the Septuagint rather than the Masoretic text, showing that the Septuagint represents an earlier and more reliable Hebrew text than the Masoretic text, despite the latter’s authority in the Judeo-Christian world. The main reason to be thankful for this translation, is that it is the main text alluded to by the writers of the New Testament. By

People sometimes ask me when the work of Bible translation will be finished. I know why they’re asking. They want Jesus to come back. They want to know if they’ll still be alive when he does. The problem is that there always has been and always will be Bible translation going on. It isn’t the kind of task you start today, finish sometime next month, and then tick the box and move on. As cultures develop and communities change there is often a need for a new translation. Not only that, previous translations may seem to be out-of-date and irrelevant, or simply not very good. [1] Another question I get asked is why Bible translation takes so long? Why can’t we, in the age of advanced computers and globalisation, speed the process up? The problem is that computers aren’t human, and can’t produce a translation good enough for use by humans. Having said that humans are, after all, only human, and tend to make mistakes, albeit smaller ones than computers. When thinking about Bible translat