Scripture Engagement

In Islam Isa 'Jesus' is considered to be a prophet. Some Christians find that offensive. But actually he was a prophet, simply not only a prophet. He was also priest (see the book of Hebrews) and king ( Masih 'Messiah', as well as the fact that as king he brought in the kingdom of God ( Mark 1:14-15 )). Nevertheless, many of us give him the honorific Masih in our Scripture engagement work. The other prophets shared between Islam and Christianity are Adam, Abraham, Jacob, Moses, David, Jonah, Elijah and many more. Some of us aren't used to, for instance Moses being called a'prophet', but in fact he is, in Deu 34:10 . David is never called a prophet, because by the the roles of king and prophet had separated out, but he listened carefully to the prophet Nathan. In any case, it is sometimes good to use the honorific 'prophet' with e.g. Jonah. There are many Jonahs living in the Muslim world, and it's good to specify we are talking about the o...

In SIL you would have thought our ultimate goal is to produce New Testaments and Bibles (not necessarily in that order), but that is not so. If the outcome you write up in your plan is 'members of the language communities are actively involved in producing appropriate high quality Scriptures and Scripture products and increasingly own the process of making them available', as it is in one SIL group, then although that may look good to funders and supporting churches, it isn't necessarily what's needed. The end (ultimate goal) of translation is transformed communities/lives , therefore we need to merge Scripture engagement and translation into one outcome, which would be something like: 'Through engagement with available and accessible Scripture products and Scripture-based products, communities are internalising the good news and demonstrating it in their daily lives.' The actual work of Bible translation leads to that outcome. Therefore translation tea...

Despite what I posted earlier about people having several mother tongues, it's still a fundamental belief of ours that people need to access Scripture in a language they know well, that they are fluent in. Today I was asked in an email for articles that back this up. In fact, here is the question: 'I’m writing a paper based on my research about the impact of reading the Bible in English versus mother tongue, and wondered if you have articles to hand or Wycliffe/SLI (sic.) statements of values which might outline why we believe that having the Bible in one’s heart language/mother tongue is important (even if the English translation is available).' The question was written by a PhD student. By SLI she means SIL , I think. Wycliffe is short for  Wycliffe Bible Translators . TBH I was slightly confused by the question. Why 'English'. Did she mean 'the Language of Wider Communication' (Spanish, French, Russian, Classical Arabic... )? Here is my reply: ...