Biblical Hebrew Forum

[Peter Kirk <peterkirk AT qaya.org>]

On 06/01/2005 20:30, Bill Rea wrote:

> 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.
>  

The Message is described on its own cover as a "paraphrasing 
translation". So it is not claiming to be anything different from what 
it actually is. The publishers and Peterson are not responsible for what 
others may call it.

> 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, ...

Perhaps you can explain to me and this group where they fitted, because 
if you remember you left me very confused about your model and its 
terminology.

> ... 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.
>  

And is this person "biblically illiterate"? I doubt it, after at least 8 
years of studying two different Bible versions. So your anecdotal 
evidence doesn't even support your thesis.

--
Peter Kirk
peter AT qaya.org (personal)
peterkirk AT qaya.org (work)
http://www.qaya.org/



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