{"id":4027,"date":"2024-09-23T08:52:01","date_gmt":"2024-09-23T12:52:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/js1cd06kre.onrocket.site\/?p=4027"},"modified":"2024-09-23T09:03:30","modified_gmt":"2024-09-23T13:03:30","slug":"the-best-bible","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/23\/the-best-bible\/","title":{"rendered":"The Best Bible"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, <\/em>click here<\/a>

There was no way John Wycliffe\u2019s theological opponents were going to let his earthly remains rest in peace.

In 1415, some 31 years after the Oxford professor had died, he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church at the Council of Constance. Thirteen years later, his bones were exhumed from his grave. They were summarily burned and then scattered on the River Swift.

Take that, you wretched heretic.  <\/em>

What dreadful thing had Wycliffe done to generate such lingering institutional hostility? 

He had dared to translate the Bible into English, his native tongue.

During his lifetime, Wycliffe was widely regarded as Europe\u2019s preeminent scholar. He had the unsettling habit of speaking his mind, however, and frequently found himself accused of a variety of heresies and dragged into the courts of the church. Even though he personally remained a loyal Catholic and never advocated separation from Rome, Protestants would one day regard him as \u201cThe Morning Star of the Reformation.\u201d

And no, he\u2019s not holding a baseball bat in the picture above.

Late in life, stripped of his tenure at Oxford and forbidden to teach his dissenting views, Wycliffe chose to throw himself into the task of creating an English version of the Bible.

He advocated the radical notion that followers of Jesus should have access to God\u2019s Word in their own tongues. Few people actually attended church during the Middle Ages, for the simple reason that worship was conducted in Latin, not in French, Italian, Dutch, or English. Only the priest knew what was happening.

Wycliffe reflected, \u201cForasmuch as the Bible contains Christ, that is all that is necessary for salvation, it is necessary for all men, not for priests alone.\u201d

Critics scoffed. Latin was the language of the angels, they believed, and reserved for spiritual elites. English was a primitive language spoken only by \u201cpigs.\u201d

Wycliffe was more than willing to throw in his lot with the pigs, seeing as he was convinced Jesus had likewise preferred the company of the humble \u201cpigs\u201d of his own time as opposed to self-important elites.

The scholar-in-exile polished off his first edition about 1380. It was distributed secretly by his followers. More than two centuries later, the translation team that produced the 1611 King James Version of the Bible relied heavily on Wycliffe\u2019s remarkable scholarship.

Today, no one doubts that the multiplication of indigenous-language Bibles has become one of the greatest gifts ever bestowed upon the world.

How many different translations are there? 

At last count, there are some 3,023 complete Bible versions on the market in 2,005 different languages. According to Wycliffe Bible Translators \u2013 the global ministry named for the scholar who dared to keep writing in the face of lifelong opposition \u2013 at least one book of the Bible is available in something like 3,600 languages. It\u2019s the dream of WBT to render the Word in every global tongue and dialect. For at least 985 languages, that work has yet to begin.

How many English translations are out there?

John Wycliffe would be amazed. If you count revisions and updates of existing versions, there are more than 450.

That\u2019s genuinely encouraging, of course, but it leaves a much more important question hanging in mid-air: Which of those Bibles is the best one? Which one should I be reading? 

It all depends what you\u2019re seeking. There\u2019s an acknowledged tension between two very good things \u2013 accuracy and understandability. Some translations (the New American Standard Bible<\/em> comes to mind) are wonderfully accurate. But they are notoriously wooden. Certain Bible paraphrases (like Kenneth Taylor\u2019s Living Bible<\/em> and the American Bible Society\u2019s Good News Bible<\/em>) are delightfully readable. But they lack theological precision.

Two popular English translations currently claim to combine readability with accuracy: the New International Version or NIV (which, when it comes to theological nuances, tends to favor evangelical perspectives) and the New Revised Standard Version or NRSV (which comes closer to the spirit of mainline Protestant churches). I appreciate both, and use them interchangeably when writing reflections.

Then there\u2019s The Message<\/em>, the extraordinary paraphrase written over a ten-year-period by a single pastor-scholar, the late Eugene Peterson.

Peterson\u2019s chief aim was to help 21st<\/sup> century Americans understand what ancient Hebrew prophets and the first apostles were actually thinking \u2013 in language that everyone can understand. When it comes to readability, Peterson hit it out of the park.

But the next time you find yourself writing a thesis on Paul\u2019s understanding of the atonement, The Message<\/em> is not going to be your go-to scriptural source. That was never Peterson\u2019s intention.  

In the end, there\u2019s a simple way to identity which Bible translation is the best.

The Bible that\u2019s best for you is not the one that\u2019s gathering dust on your shelf, that all your friends rave about, or that consistently gets a five-star rating on Amazon.

The Bible that\u2019s best for you is the one you actually read \u2013 whatever version that happens to be.<\/em>

To which John Wycliffe would be the very first person to say, \u201cAmen!\u201d
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To listen to today’s reflection as a podcast, click here There was no way John Wycliffe\u2019s theological opponents were going to let his earthly remains rest in peace. In 1415, some 31 years after the Oxford professor had died, he was excommunicated by the Catholic Church at the Council of Constance. Thirteen years later, his bones were exhumed from his grave…. Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4028,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[581,808],"class_list":["post-4027","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-bible","tag-translations"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4027"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4031,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4027\/revisions\/4031"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4028"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4027"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4027"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/glennsreflections.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4027"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}