Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Bill Rea <bsr15 AT cantsl.it.canterbury.ac.nz>]

Peter wrote:-

>So I don't think these are what
>Bill had in mind when he commented on "the excesses of paraphrases
>posing as translations which are striving for originality and novelty in
>English".

When I wrote that I was thinking of ``The Message: The Bible in
Contemporary Language'' which is commonly called The Message
Translation. I expect if they titled it ``The Message - A Bible
Paraphrase by Eugene H. Peterson'' its sales would have been
substantially less.

I think we might have a culture clash over this issue. I went to
Amazon and in the reader review of The Message by Jeff Zizz I found
this:-

>Perhaps the reason so many of the church attending public are biblically
>illiterate is because of the over-emphasis on word for word translations.

In NZ the opposite is the case. Recently I was asked for advice on
purchasing a new Bible by a University student with limited funds.
They had used the TEV while in Sunday School (up to age 12/13) then
switched to the NIV when in youth group (ages 13-19) and felt it was
time for a new version. I used my spectrum model with them, explained
where I thought the TEV and NIV fitted, asked some questions about
their intended use, where they wanted to go on the spectrum, etc, and
after looking at a number of versions they decided to by a NASB. Very much
to my surprize the Christian book store had to order one in. The sales
assistant said they sell so few NASBs that they don't carry it as a
stock item. If you're wanting a word-for-word style translation its
hard to pass up the NASB for something else.

Bill Rea, IT Services, Canterbury  University \_
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