In this podcast, I give an overview of the views of heaven and hell that arose through Greek philosophy and then were integrated into the New Testament. The worldview of the New Testament shifts as a result between the Gospels and the following Letters. In Revelation, the Old Testament worldview comes to culmination. The book takes place in heaven, but has an ultimate goal of a New Earth where God and humans dwell together. This raises the question of how we respond - what should we believe about heaven and hell, and how does that affect the way we share the Gospel? While this podcast can't answer all the questions, it attempts to summarize these views and our response!

We return to the Key Terms in Translation series with the terms "heaven" and "hell". These terms are much more complicated than the meanings of the words. They reflect the worldview of the people in the Bible. This podcast explores the worldview of the Ancient Near-Eastern people of the Old Testament, and how that affected their view of God's space, the place of the dead, and their eternal destiny. 

The cover picture is a painting by William Blake of "Jacob's Ladder" - a place of access between "God's space" and "human space".

Adapting to culture is a huge part of missionary life. There are many ways to define culture, and many overlapping cultural features. One aspect of culture that I find particularly interesting is how people respond when they have done something wrong. Three basic responses are guilt, shame, or fear. Missiologists have used these three responses to identify three cultural types that determine what is correct behavior and how to obtain resources. These are guilt/innocence, shame/honor, and fear/power. This podcast gives an overview of these three cultural types and how they are found in the Gospel.

"Abomination of Desolation" is a term that often leaves Bible readers scratching their heads. These words themselves aren't often used, and together they are even less clear! This podcast looks at the meanings of each word, the meaning of the phrase together, and how it is fulfilled in history (because it is used in prophecy!). It also looks at how we translate terms like this that are confusing without some explanation.

My translation team has had some difficulty with the word "preach". What exactly does it mean to "preach"? Is it the same as an "announcement"? Listen to find out the Hebrew and Greek words, the etymology of our English words, and how we have chosen a word for our translation.

Another key term in translation! This podcast looks at the key term "In Christ". This term is one that my team has considered and actually changed in our translation. "In Christ" seems like a phrase that is easy to understand, but the implications are a bit more complicated. How do we understand and then translate the deeper meaning of "in Christ"?

As we approach Easter, I wanted to look at another key term - the term "Passover". I wanted to look at this from a slightly different perspective. What do we do when we come upon a new interpretation of a well-known word? I read an article with a possible new interpretation of the word Passover. Listen to find out the new interpretation and what we do with that as translators.

Atonement has been a hard word to translate for our team in West Africa. Part of the reason is that the meaning of atonement now is quite different than the meaning of the original Hebrew word. How did that happen? This podcast talks about both the linguistic and meaning paths that "atonement" took from Hebrew to English, and what that means for translation.

Do the words "righteousness" and "justice" mean the same thing in English? How about in French? And what are the words in Greek and Hebrew? These questions prompted me to look a little more in depth at these key terms, which are very significant terms in translation.

Grace is our next key term in translation! This is a word we are quite familiar with, but is still difficult to translate as we consider the depth of the word. Here we consider the meanings of the original words, along with a particular translation that uses the word "love" to translate grace, and then the translation I am working with, which uses the phrase "free help". So do these accurately represent the meaning of the word grace? Listen in to find out!

Photo by Laura Allen on Unsplash