Scripture Engagement

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...