Restitutio

Last December the Coronavirus pandemic began spreading from Wuhan, China across the world. As of today, globally we know of approximately 30 million cases across 188 countries and territories resulting in 941,000 deaths and 20.3 million who have recovered. The United States has the most cases with 6.7 million infected (roughly 2% of the population) and nearly 200,000 deaths (a mortality rate of almost 3%). In this interview, I'm bringing on Russell Brown (my brother-in-law) to share about his own COVID-19 experience, including his symptoms and recovery. He is a passionate Christian who can bring a faith-based perspective to this situation.

—— Links ——

• Watch Russell and Joelle Brown's video retelling their experience, "Trusting through Storms"
• More podcasts from Russell Brown
• Check out Brown's parenting teaching, "Disciplining Children"
• More YouTube videos featuring Russell Brown
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

Today, we've got three more texts to look at in our selection of unitarian Bible translations. Unlike last time where we focused on Christologically interesting passages, today, we'll examine Luke 23.43, John 7.53-8.11, and 1 Thessalonians 1.3 to look at a punctuation issue, a textual issue, and a grammatical issue. By the end of this episode we hope you'll have a firmer grasp on the differences between these translations. Of course, we could go on to compare many more verses, but we're going to draw this to an end here and this episode will round out this series on unitarian Bible translations.

—— Links ——

• Read Wierwille's research paper on John 7.53-8.11, "My Favorite Fake Bible Passage"
• 354 Unitarian Bible Translations 1 (Jerry Wierwille)
• 355 Unitarian Bible Translations 2 (Jerry Wierwille)
• Check out these other episodes with Jerry Wierwille
• For my class on How We Got the Bible, half of which covered translation issues, follow this link.
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

Last time we reviewed six unitarian Bible translations, covering some basic information about where each came from and their overall strategy for translation. Today, we're going to analyze how they translate three key texts, including Philippians 2.6, John 1.1-3, and John 8.58. Our goal is to measure these translations against what the Greek says as well as noting significant variations from mainstream translations and each other.

—— Links ——

• Check out these other episodes with Jerry Wierwille
• For previous episodes that cover these verses in greater detail see God’s Form or God’s Nature (Translating Philippians 2.6-7) and Did Jesus Claim to Be the I AM? (Translating John 8.58)
• For John 1, see Dale Tuggy's "Trinities" podcast episode 290: Is the “Socinian” interpretation of John 1 correct?
• For my class on How We Got the Bible, half of which covered translation issues, follow this link.
• If you’d like to support Restitutio, you can donate here.
• Intro music: Good Vibes by MBB Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) Free Download / Stream: Music promoted by Audio Library

In our last episode, I recommended some mainstream Christian Bible translations, but I would remiss if I didn’t also review some important unitarian Bible translations.  Although often overlooked, these versions are important because they have the opposite bias when it comes to passages commonly offered as proof texts for the Trinity.  Also, I asked Dr. Jerry Wierwille to join me today, since he is Bible translator, currently working on a unitarian bible translation.  In today’s episode we’ll review the following:

In this episode, we’ll offer some background on each of these versions and in our next episode we’ll compare them and see how they handle a number of interesting texts.

—— Links ——

This is now our last episode in this 24 part class on How We Got the Bible.  Today after a quick review and an appeal to learn the biblical languages, I’ll recommend a number of Bible translations.  Although I’m hesitant to do this, so many have written in asking for it that I would be negligent to avoid making some recommendations in this last episode.  Additionally, we’ll cover a list of 7 verses you can use to check translations accuracy (see below).

—— Verses to Check for Translation Accuracy ——

—— Recommended Translations ——

—— Biased Translations to Avoid ——

—— Outdated Translations ——

—— Links ——

This is our fifth and final example of bias in translation. After this episode, we’ll have one more to conclude our class on How We Got the Bible.  Today our focus is God’s spirit.  Should it have an uppercase ‘S’ or a lowercase ‘s?’  Should pronouns referring back to spirit be masculine (like “he”) or neuter (like “it”)?  Is the spirit a “who” or a “which?”  In this episode we’ll get into the grammar of holy spirit in an attempt to show how translation bias steers unsuspecting readers in the direction of the traditional teaching about the personality of the spirit.

—— Books & Papers ——

—— Links ——

Did Jesus claim to be “The Great I AM” in John 8.58?  If not, what was he saying?  In this episode we examine the alleged parallel passage in Exodus where God reveals his name to Moses at the burning bush.  Next, we’ll explore texts with the same Greek construction that Jesus used in an effort to sniff out bias.  In the end we’ll see there are three viable possibilities for translating John 8.58, the least likely of which is what we find in most translations.

—— Books ——

—— Links ——

Colossians 1.15 presents an interesting test case to examine translation bias.  Well-meaning Bible students have taken this text in at least three different ways.  However, some translators, motivated by a fear that readers might see Christ as a member of creation, have increasingly pushed for translating this text so that it says Christ is superior to all creation and thus on the creator side of the creator-creature divide.  In what follows I examine several popular translations and discuss the two main issues in this verse.

—— Books ——

—— Links ——

How should translators render the word προκσυνέω (proskuneo) into English?  Since this word has a range of meanings from bowing as a sign of respect to worshiping God, translators sometimes decide what English words to use based more on their theological presuppositions than the grammar or textual context.  For example, some translations (mostly those done by evangelicals) employ the language of worship when proskuneo is done to Jesus but then interpret the term as a respectful gesture when done to others.  This, I suggest, is another smoking gun of translation bias.

—— Books ——

—— Links ——

This is our first of five examples of bias in translation. Today we’ll examine Philippians 2.6-7, specifically focusing on how translators render two important words (ἁρπαγμός harpagmon and μορφή morphe). We’ll see how a couple of the most popular evangelical versions break free from the underlying Greek syntax in order to inject their own doctrinal bias into scripture. Regardless of your own interpretation of this passage, can we all agree that translators should not read their beliefs into scripture?

—— Books ——

—— Links ——