All in Delight in the Word
In my last blog post I discussed "Augustine's Angst" over words in Jerome’s Latin translation of the Old Testament from Hebrew, words that didn’t line up with the beloved Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament). Most of us can identify with Augustine. In the 1970s, when I was a high school student, I was greatly puzzled by the omission of the words “in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one” (1 John 5:7, KJV) in my new “modern” translation!
. . . early in the RBL initiative I felt that something was missing that I wanted to address—a concise picture of the power and beauty of the biblical storyline. I wanted people to see the amazing, miraculous unity of the Scripture’s message, how the whole thing fits together around core themes that are life-changing once we grasp them.
The world may be "death impregnated," as one of my mentors used to say, and most of us know the bite of suffering in one form or another, but it also is brim-full of beauty because it everywhere bears the mark of his thumbprint, his "It was very good" (Gen. 1:31). The common graces of tastes, sights, touch, sounds, enduring friendship, love, joy, community. And much, much beauty has been squeezed into the world through the funnel of God's good Word, the Bible.
In 2013 while on research leave at Tyndale House in Cambridge, UK, I had a chance to examine the holdings of the British and Foreign Bible Society personally. The collection, housed in the Cambridge University library, was curated by a friend of mine. In addition to very old copies of the Bible (including first editions of Tyndale's New Testament!), there were shelves of translator notes and Bible's from missions contexts around the world. And there too was Mary Jones' Bible, which I held in my hand.
If you spend any time in the blogosphere, you probably have come across helpful lists on how to become a better reader. Some, like “How To Become a Better Reader in 10 Steps” by Gretchen Rubin, or Tim Challis’ “10 Tips to Read More and Read Better,” offer practical guidance for reading in general. I often find such articles helpful for rebooting my engagement with the written page. As the tagline at the top of the screen suggests, the purpose of this blog is to help you pick up and read the Bible better, and in this post and the next I want to offer 6 places to begin. So how might we “read the Bible better?”
