One of my favorite questions as a Bible-scholar-lady is “So, what’s the best translation?” I love this question not only because it opens the door to substantive discussion that can last for the better part of a class period… no matter how long the meeting. But I also love it because we get to talk …
It was a great honor to be invited to give the Dillard series of lectures at Trinity United Methodist Church this year. Wow, what a turn-out! and what wonderfully warm, hospitable, and thoughtful folks I met there, people deeply invested in the pursuit of understanding, committed as much to the humbling business of query and …
There is a long-standing tradition that no person, no mere mortal, should presume to possess the name of God. The Name, as the reasoning goes, is a holy thing, a handle on the divine not to be trifled with. We hear concern about its misuse in the ancient biblical commandment, “Thou shalt not take the …
“Did you know,” a bright-eyed young woman breathlessly exclaimed to me, “that when King James wrote the Bible, he didn’t actually put everything in?!” I was riding the DC Metro a few weeks ago when she sat down beside me with this information. Since people don’t normally talk on the train (unless it’s a first …
“The language of God,” Biblical Hebrew. I’m off soon to teach our third week’s class, and we’re in the thick of it now. The alphabet (or aleph-bet) is kind of fun — little ditties, the novelty of recognizing letters completely different from what we see in English, of reading from right to left. But the …
The Particular Exasperations of Learning Biblical Hebrew Read More »
Countless visual representations of the Garden of Eden creation story narrated in Genesis chaps 2-3 depict a crisp apple as the downfall of Adam and Eve. Yet the original Hebrew reads simply “fruit.” Without knowing that, we English speakers (and readers) can be excused for assuming that it was specifically an apple such as a Gala …
I just finished an interpretive translation of the biblical book of Numbers for “The Voice,” a multi-volume project to which many extraordinary Christian writers have contributed. I’m honored to be in their company. Numbers is a funny book — one minute you can be slogging through mind-numbing details of genealogies or ritual details and the next you’re …
I had the great good fortune to read a couple of new Bible translations and communicate, albeit briefly, with their creators for an article that will appear in Publishers Weekly Religion BookLine (10/28). In both cases, the translators are poets in their own right. Not only that, but both have worked for decades with these …
Over the past couple of days, my editor, agent, and I have been scrambling to deal with an ironic case of mistaken identity in Bible Babel. In short: the main character’s name isn’t correct in the version poised to go out to reviewers and potential endorsers. Yikes! One of the reasons that I wrote Bible …
Work is underway on a new translation of the King James Version designed to correct what its authors call a “liberal bias” in modern translations. Conservapedia, which claims to be “the trustworthy encyclopedia,” has determined to correct what it sees as “three sources of errors in conveying biblical meaning are, in increasing amount: lack of precision in the original …
