Report: Bible Courses - TX Public Schools. Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) Bible Courses in Public Schools. Bible Courses in Public Schools: SBL's Response to a Growing Trend The cover of Time Magazine (April 2, 2007) proclaims "Why We Should Teach the Bible in Public Schools.
" Stephen J. What You Should Know Before Reading The Bible - Kristin Swenson. This essay might, alternatively, be called "On Not Reading the Bible.
" But then I must hastily add: I'm not against reading the Bible. Not exactly, anyway. Thing is, the Bible doesn't lend itself to reading straight through for understanding in the ways that modern books do. It is a wildly unusual book, and there is a big difference between simply reading it and knowing about it. Simply reading the Bible (really reading it, in any of its three main forms, all the way through) without any background information results more often than not in bewilderment and confusion, leaving readers at the mercy of others to interpret for them.
Without any background information, simply reading the Bible is not only really hard (Leviticus, anyone?) Other uninformed readings can have terrible effects. Sure, there's some overlap between reading and knowing -- just by reading, you'd observe that the Bible includes both a seven-day creation story and a Garden of Eden creation story, for example.
An Individualist Approach To The Hebrew Bible. Hebrew scripture is a "message in a bottle," says Yoram Hazony, and in The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture, he tries to decipher that message.
Hazony's new book makes the case for a different reading of the ancient texts — and argues that the Hebrew Bible is a work of philosophy in narrative form. Hazony says the five books of Moses — which Christians speak of as the Old Testament — should not be thought of as discrete narrative but, rather, considered together with the books of Judges, Samuel and Kings. All of those books form a history of Israel, from the creation story to the dissolution and dismemberment of a decadent monarchy.
It is a cautionary tale, an epic that advocates wariness of great imperial powers and individualism in the face of authority. The scriptures were most likely written down by the prophet Jeremiah or one of his students while they were in exile, Hazony tells NPR's Robert Siegel. Interview Highlights "It's quite a long history. Translating the Bible - I. Scholars are still laboring to produce a contemporary English version of God's Holy Word by Barry Hoberman The online version of this article appears in three parts.
Click here to go to part two. Click here to go to part three. Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, and Jews alike affirm that the Bible is Holy Scripture, the inspired Word of God. Translations of the Bible do more than fortify the faithful and make money. The first English translation of the entire Bible was made in the late fourteenth century, by followers of the religious reformer John Wyclif. Tyndale was a superior scholar of Greek and a fine Hebraist for his time, but he fairly brimmed with controversial theological opinions. Practically every English translation of the Bible made in the past 450 years owes something to William Tyndale's work. The King James Version borrowed more from its sixteenth-century precursors than is sometimes acknowledged. Copyright © 1985 by Barry Hoberman. Translating the Bible - II. The online version of this article appears in three parts.
Click here to go to part one. Click here to go to part three. The next issue that confronts the Bible translator is that of the textual basis for the translation. We have no original text of any biblical book, and some books may have circulated in more than one version almost from the beginning of their existence as written documents. One theory has it that in the case of a number of Old Testament books three distinct texts emerged between the fifth and first centuries B.C., among the Jews of Palestine, Egypt, and Babylonia, respectively.
How, then, do Bible translators establish reliable working texts of the books that they are to translate? Establishing a good critical text for the New Testament is a less severe task than establishing a text for the Old. Translating the Bible - III. The online version of this article appears in three parts.
Click here to go to part one. Click here to go to part two. The final issue in the translation process -- and one that goes hand in hand with determining the meaning of the original text -- is putting the text into appropriate English. Bible translations can and do differ markedly in the way they handle questions of canon, textual basis, and interpretation, but style is the main criterion by which most readers distinguish one version of the Bible from another. Although the question of archaic language has already been touched on, a few more things need to be said, if only because this issue obstinately refuses to die.
Duke University - The Bible in the Public Square.