Daily Bible Reading Podcast

HOSEA 9-10:In the first paragraph of chapter 6, Hosea or the Lord quoted the people saying, “Let’s return to the Lord! He has hurt us, … but he will bandage our wounds won’t he? In two or three days he will revive us…” But following that there are three chapters where the Lord tells why Israel’s returning is always fickle and insincere. PROVERBS 24b:Just one of many neat nuggets of truth in today’s reading: Pro. 24:26 NLT An honest answer is like a kiss of friendship. MATTHEW 6a:Yesterday’s reading had five ‘You have heard it said … But I tell you …’ And they included some of the hardest ones for us to obey. GNT Translation notes:Mat. 6:9 This, then, is how you should pray: ‘Our Father in heaven: May [all people honor You as the Holy God//your holy name be honored];[I have pointed out in many other places that ‘name’ is often used as a metonymy that stands for God’s whole personhood, not just his name. GNT introduces another potential problem, making it sound like God has more than one name, and just the holy name should be honored. I have suggested above that this be translated as a metonymy, but even so, we must bear in mind that God shows great concern for his name in the Old Testament— beginning in the Ten Commandments. If that phrase is translated with that in mind, it could also be translated, “May your name always be spoken with respect befitting your holiness.” Both ideas may be in view in that first line of the prayer.]10 may [You come to set up your kingdom here on earth//You come to rule here on earth as king//your Kingdom come]; may your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.[In most of the world’s languages a ‘kingdom’ cannot come or move. Instead it is more natural to say that a King will come to rule.] NLT Translation notes:Prov. 24:30 I walked by the field of a lazy [man/person],the vineyard of one with no common sense.====[In this memorized and often repeated verse, I suggest that ‘name’ should be taken as a metonymy that stands for God. See the note in the GNT section.]Mat. 6:9 Pray like this:Our Father in heaven,may [You always and everywhere be regarded as holy//your name be kept holy.][In most of the world’s languages a ‘kingdom’ cannot come or move. Instead it is more natural to say that a King will come to rule.]10 May [You come as king to rule on this earth//your Kingdom come soon.]May your will be done on earth, as it is in heaven.

1CHRONICLES 3:
So far we have traced Jakob/Israel’s descendants into the time of David, and today’s reading picks up with David himself.

PROVERBS 3b:
Here is a quote from today’s group of proverbs:

Pro. 3:20 NLT The poor are despised even by their neighbors,
while the rich have many “friends.”

EPHESIANS 4:
Paul’s letters are usually divided into two parts, with the ethereal and theological part first, followed by the practical part. Yesterday we concluded the ethereal and theological part with Paul’s incredible prayer for his readers and for us at the end of chapter 3. And now we enter the practical part of his letter.

GNT Translation notes:
Eph. 4:13 And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our [believing//faith] and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ's full stature.
22 So[, like throwing away old clothes,] get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to—the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires.
24 and [like putting on new clothes,] you must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy.

NLT Translation notes:
Pro. 3:5An honest witness does not lie;
a false witness breathes [out] lies.
====
Eph. 4:5 [We all worship//There is] one Lord, [we all fully believe in Christ/one faith], [we all have been baptized as his followers/one baptism],
[In Indonesia ‘one baptism’ has been misunderstood by people on both sides of the main baptism debate. One side say, “One baptism means you should only be baptized once (so if you were baptized as a baby, don’t get baptized again anywhere else!)” The other side says, “One baptism means there is only one way to be baptized, and that is by immersion.” Both sides miss the point, because this passage is about things that unify us, not divide us!]
6 and [we all serve the same//one] God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
17 With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the [non-Jewish pagans/Gentiles] do, for they are hopelessly confused.
32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God [has forgiven you because of your being joined to Christ./through Christ has forgiven you.]

 

1CHRONICLES 3:
So far we have traced Jakob/Israel’s descendants into the time of David, and today’s reading picks up with David himself.

PROVERBS 3b:
Here is a quote from today’s group of proverbs:

Pro. 3:20 NLT The poor are despised even by their neighbors,
while the rich have many “friends.”

EPHESIANS 4:
Paul’s letters are usually divided into two parts, with the ethereal and theological part first, followed by the practical part. Yesterday we concluded the ethereal and theological part with Paul’s incredible prayer for his readers and for us at the end of chapter 3. And now we enter the practical part of his letter.

GNT Translation notes:
Eph. 4:13 And so we shall all come together to that oneness in our [believing//faith] and in our knowledge of the Son of God; we shall become mature people, reaching to the very height of Christ's full stature.
22 So[, like throwing away old clothes,] get rid of your old self, which made you live as you used to—the old self that was being destroyed by its deceitful desires.
24 and [like putting on new clothes,] you must put on the new self, which is created in God's likeness and reveals itself in the true life that is upright and holy.

NLT Translation notes:
Pro. 3:5An honest witness does not lie;
a false witness breathes [out] lies.
====
Eph. 4:5 [We all worship//There is] one Lord, [we all fully believe in Christ/one faith], [we all have been baptized as his followers/one baptism],
[In Indonesia ‘one baptism’ has been misunderstood by people on both sides of the main baptism debate. One side say, “One baptism means you should only be baptized once (so if you were baptized as a baby, don’t get baptized again anywhere else!)” The other side says, “One baptism means there is only one way to be baptized, and that is by immersion.” Both sides miss the point, because this passage is about things that unify us, not divide us!]
6 and [we all serve the same//one] God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
17 With the Lord’s authority I say this: Live no longer as the [non-Jewish pagans/Gentiles] do, for they are hopelessly confused.
32 Instead, be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God [has forgiven you because of your being joined to Christ./through Christ has forgiven you.]

 

1st CHRONICLES 1:
Jewish and Christian traditions hold that Jeremiah was the author of 1&2 Kings, which were originally one book. And that Ezra, the priest, wrote 1&2 Chronicles, which are also one book in the Hebrew. It may be that Ezra wrote these books after his return to Jerusalem. The Greek Septuagint names this book Paraleipomena, which means ‘things left over’. This book does supplement things not found in other books. Compared to the books of Samuel and Kings, Chronicles focuses more on the spiritual misdeeds of the kings and the importance of worshiping the Lord properly through the ministry of the priests and the Temple. This fits well with Ezra being the author. So we turn from the Prophets and return to the books of history.

PROVERBS 13b:
Here is a favorite verse from today’s reading:
16 Wise people think before they act;
fools don’t—and even brag about their foolishness. (NLT)

EPHESIANS 3:
At the first of chapter 1, Paul mentioned God’s “secret plan he had already decided to complete by means of Christ. This plan … was to bring Everything together with Christ as head.” At the end of chapter 2, we learned that specifically, through our union with Christ, all believers are made one— no matter if they are Jews or non-Jews. Paul restates God’s secret plan in a more concise and clear way in today’s chapter as he moves to this letter’s second major prayer.

There are two instances of ‘joined/in union with Christ’ in this chapter.

Translation notes:
12 In union with Christ and through our [believing//faith] in him we have the boldness to go into God's presence with all confidence.
17 and I pray that Christ will make his home in your hearts through [your believing//faith]. I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love,

1st CHRONICLES 1:
Jewish and Christian traditions hold that Jeremiah was the author of 1&2 Kings, which were originally one book. And that Ezra, the priest, wrote 1&2 Chronicles, which are also one book in the Hebrew. It may be that Ezra wrote these books after his return to Jerusalem. The Greek Septuagint names this book Paraleipomena, which means ‘things left over’. This book does supplement things not found in other books. Compared to the books of Samuel and Kings, Chronicles focuses more on the spiritual misdeeds of the kings and the importance of worshiping the Lord properly through the ministry of the priests and the Temple. This fits well with Ezra being the author. So we turn from the Prophets and return to the books of history.

PROVERBS 13b:
Here is a favorite verse from today’s reading:
16 Wise people think before they act;
fools don’t—and even brag about their foolishness. (NLT)

EPHESIANS 3:
At the first of chapter 1, Paul mentioned God’s “secret plan he had already decided to complete by means of Christ. This plan … was to bring Everything together with Christ as head.” At the end of chapter 2, we learned that specifically, through our union with Christ, all believers are made one— no matter if they are Jews or non-Jews. Paul restates God’s secret plan in a more concise and clear way in today’s chapter as he moves to this letter’s second major prayer.

There are two instances of ‘joined/in union with Christ’ in this chapter.

Translation notes:
12 In union with Christ and through our [believing//faith] in him we have the boldness to go into God's presence with all confidence.
17 and I pray that Christ will make his home in your hearts through [your believing//faith]. I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love,

Today’s NLT Bible readings are 1 Samuel 18; 1 Samuel 19; Psalm 102; Romans 6:19-23; Romans 7:1-17.

Today’s NLT Bible readings are 1 Samuel 16; Psalm 100; Romans 6.

The purpose of this podcast is to announce my short paper telling why I support the Byzantine Greek Text (BT) as the most accurate representation of what the apostles wrote. This has been a major decision for me, because it means that my translation team and I will revise our published Indonesian New Testament by they year 2022. Here’s the link. You will not be able to see the footnotes in this text, so I have attached a PDF file as Bonus Content for this podcast. In order to see it, you will probably need to visit dailybiblereading.info and find this episode. I was not interested, and not even open, to considering the Byzantine Greek text over the ET (Eclectic Text//United Bible Societies Text/Nestle-Aland Text) until I went to meet Dr. Timothy Friberg, who also has worked in Indonesia for as long as I have. Dr. Friberg is the genius who compiled the Analytical Greek New Testament (AGNT), first published in 1985. The AGNT provides more helpful and accurate grammatical parsing of the NT Greek text because it is based on careful linguistic analysis, rather than the traditional Latin-derived parsing. It is therefore used by a majority of trained Bible translators and many others. When Friberg talks about anything having to do with Greek grammar, then people really should listen. He is the one who convinced me about the Byzantine Greek text being the best one, and the best one for us to translate for all audiences. But especially for someone working in Indonesia, it is so much better to use the Byzantine Text. Here’s why: Muslims believe that their Al-Koran has been unchanged through the centuries, and that the Christian Bible (particularly the New Testament) has been fiddled with.  Their belief in the immutability of the Al-Koran is actually incorrect, but they have ample proof that the NT has been fiddled with, because they can point to words taken out of our Bibles in the last 120 years. In contrast, the BT has been stable through the centuries. It includes most of the words that readers familiar with the KJV miss in modern translations, and it can be translated without the need of any footnotes talking about textual variants. I have written a short article (linked here in the episode notes) that outlines how the shift happened to translating the ET rather than a better Greek text. I hope that some of my listeners will be interested in that story. Here are a few teaser facts: About 120 years ago, Christians were told that earlier manuscripts penned on papyrus and preserved in the dry climate of Egypt (especially around the library center in Alexandria) more likely revealed the authentic form of the words penned by the apostles. Subsequent manuscript finds and analysis over the next century did NOT support the claims that manuscripts of the Alexandrian type form a stream that consistently points to the most authentic text of the NT. What research showed is that Alexandrian manuscripts show sloppy and wild variations because Egyptian copyists freely redacted the texts they copied. Wescott and Hort published their Greek NT in 1881. It was based on only two Alexandrian texts, Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Successive editions were published by Eberhard Nestle (beginning in 1898), who was followed by his son, then Kurt Aland (in the 1950s). All these editions prioritized Alexandrian manuscripts. These editions are known by various names, and I will refer to them as the Eclectic Text. Even though many textual discoveries were documented in successive editions, those discoveries were largely relegated to abstruce footnotes, and the main text still very much followed what Wescott and Hort published. The Christian public was not made aware about the wild variations discovered in Alexandrian manuscripts. It has been conclusively shown that Alexandrian copyists shortened the texts they copied. They did the same thing with Homer’s poems. Sometimes more than one variant are found in one or two verses of the Greek text. I was further convinced about the flawed nature of the ET when I found out that it displays 105 verses where the combinations of variants chosen are not represented in any extant manuscript. Or if we widen that to two consecutive verses in the ET, we find a further 210 two-verse combinations that are not found in any extant manuscript. An example in a single verse occurs in John 5:2 where no manuscript has been found anywhere that contains the name spelled ‘Bethzatha’ and the exact form of the Greek translated as ‘at the sheep gate’. To me, the presence of three hundred and fifteen unsupported combinations represents a fatal flaw in the principles used in compiling the ET. By contrast, the Byzantine Text has stayed stable throughout the centuries. Byzantine manuscripts predominately were found in the wide area which received the original letters written by the apostles, places like Antioch, Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, etc. 95% of the manuscripts containing NT books or fragments or them are of the BT type. This is why the BT is also called the Majority Text. It seems that a majority of ancient copyists believed that this was the text to pass on to following generations, and Alexandrian renderings died out. Some of you will have heard about the Textus Receptus, which is the 1516 Greek text compiled by Erasmus that became the basis of the KJV NT. In my article I show briefly why the BT is far superior to the Textus Receptus. Just as succeeding editions of the ET basically played ‘follow the leader’ since Wescott and Hort’s 1881 publication, so modern translations have played ‘follow the leader’ since the American Standard Version (ASV) of 1901. Translations that followed ASV’s lead include RSV, NASB, GNT, NIV, CEV, NLT, NET, and ESV. The prefaces of all these translations claim that the translators were following the ET, but in reality all of these only followed it around 72% of the time. In doing this, it is clear that the translators took the lazy and safe path, rather than themselves examining the textual evidence. There is no evidence that the ASV translators were super-scholars who made consistently excellent decisions about the Greek text. They (or some of them) played it safe and went with KJV-like readings in some places, but then seemingly by whim they (or others of them) went with poorly-supported textual variants in other places that were sure to anger readers— like leaving out words from the Lord’s Prayer. One after another, succeeding generations of translators of newer translations have simply following the lead of the previous popular translations, all the while keeping up an appearance of scholarship by including misleading footnotes that say, “Some manuscripts add the words …” By not following the their declared Greek text consistently, all the translators of the above listed Bibles have shown that they really did not respect the ET to be faithfully showing the content of the original autographs. If Bible translators don’t follow the ET faithfully, then what justification can be found to claim that it is the best available representation of what the apostles wrote? What Greek text will we, the Christian public, choose to follow? It doesn’t make sense to create a new edition of the Greek text based on what translators have actually translated since 1901! The assertions above are supported by hard evidence in my January 2019 article: Playing ‘Follow the Leader’ in Bible Translation. The Eclectic Text is basically dead. One might compare it to the theory of evolution. Experts from multiple scientific disciplines have repeatedly announced that evolution can no longer be maintained as a viable theory. (And many of the scientists are scratching their heads as to how to replace it, because they absolutely will not entertain returning to believing in the creation of the world.) In a similar way, seminary professors who have long taught the superiority of earlier Alexandrian manuscripts are not even open to looking at articles that might change their view. Someone has observed that just when a popular theory or philosophy has lost logical credibility, that is just when people become more bone headed about it. I hate to say it, but support for the BT will need to come from ordinary conservative Christians who care about God’s Word and His reputation, and who are willing to look at the evidence. In my article, I discuss English translations of the BT. The most available literal translation of the BT is the World English Bible, and I prefer the British Edition. Unfortunately, I find that there is no translation of the BT done in a more meaning-based manner. There is no BT-based version like the NIV or the NLT. My firm belief is that every believer should have access to at least one good literal translation and one good meaning-based translation. When a literal translation leaves the reader wondering if their understanding of a verse is correct, they need to be able to open a meaning-based translation to find their answer. ALL the false cults that have ever sprung up from the year 1600 to the present based their teaching on literal translations where the meaning of their favorite passages was hard to understand and open to multiple interpretations. My particular desire is to allow for meaningful audio recordings of a New Testament translated from the BT. Literal translations from ancient Greek cannot ever express things in a natural and easy-to-understand way in modern English. The two languages are too different. As someone who has made two complete recordings of the whole Bible, I refuse to record a verse in a translation where I know that the listener who is not following the written text will misunderstand it. That’s why my podcast notes give little tweaks I have made to even the GNT and NLT. If there is a group out there currently trying to make a good readable, meaning-based translation of the BT, I want to join them. If no group or organization has started to do this, then I will start and I call on interested parties to join me. So starting next year, I want to make a series of podcasts reading the results. I hope that this modest beginning will lead to more faithful Bible translations for the Christian public in the future. Please pray for this effort.