Divinity United

Until just yesterday, I did not know that the New Living Translation (NLT) has been revised. I was under the impression that the NLT was a free translation that was closer to its roots in the Living Bible paraphrase than to a formal equivalence or even a dynamic equivalence. Well, it turns out that on closer inspection, the NLT has been revised, and the revised version can be placed in the dynamic/functional equivalence category. The NLT was originally published in 1996 by Tyndale House Publishers. After the publication, an eight year review process of the translation was begun, which ended with the publication of the revision in 2004. The new version is still called the NLT and not the RNLT. Thus, you wouldn't know there was a revision unless you read the prefaces to NLT 2004 edition or for some odd reason ended up comparing the NLT 1996 with the NLT 2004 (as I did yesterday). The move from a free translation to a dynamic or functional equivalence translation can be seen in 1...

With the upcoming installation of our new president Dr. Gary Nelson here at Tyndale University College and Seminary (September 30), there are a number of activities that will be taking place. Thursday, September 30th from 12pm-1pm, Dr. Jennifer Powell McNutt , Assistant Professor of Theology and Church History at Wheaton College, will be giving a presentation on her research on John Calvin and his successors in 18th century Geneva. Considering her work in some of the archives in Geneva, this presentation should be of interest to faculty, staff, students, and visitors. Thursday evening at 7:30pm will be the installation of Dr. Gary Nelson. This will be held at the Bayview Campus Chapel. Friday, October 1st, Tyndale is hosting a day long conference entitled "Tyndale Thinks & Writes" (Find details here ). There are two morning addresses. The first entitled "The Role of the University in the 21st Century" will be given by Dr. David Barnard, President of the ...

Tommy Wasserman has posted some information at Evangelical Textual Criticism about events taking place next year around the 400th anniversary of the completion of the King James Bible (1611-2011). There is no doubt that the King James Bible has profoundly shaped the English language. What should also not be forgotten is the debt that the King James translators owe to the earlier translation work of William Tyndale. David Daniell states in the opening paragraph of his biography of William Tyndale ( William Tyndale: A Biography (Yale Nota Bene) : "William Tyndale gave us our English Bible. The sages assembled by King James to prepare the Authorised Version of 1611, so often praised for unlikely corporate inspiration, took over Tyndale's work. Nine-tenths of the Authorised Version's New Testament is Tyndale's. The same is true of the first half of the Old Testament, which is as far as he was able to get before he was executed in Brussels in 1536."

Now, almost two months since the colloquium at the University of Bangor, I will offer some final comments on the well-run colloquium that was put on by Catrin Williams and facilitated by Hazel Thompson. Attending a small, intimate conference on a single topic is of so much more value than any large conference with multiple sessions. With everyone in attendance for all the papers, it is possible to have ongoing discussion about certain topics and for links to be made and suggested between papers. One thing that is abundantly clear to me is the continual need to address the definition of 'apocalyptic' and 'apocalypse'. These words, particularly the former, are often used in various ways that can cause confusion about what is being discussed. Numerous texts that are not generally considered apocalypses can be fit under the heading of 'apocalyptic' and there usually is no rationale as to why this is the case. Clearly, texts can have 'apocalyptic' materia...

My good friend Brian Lugioyo's book Martin Bucer's Doctrine of Justification: Reformation Theology and Early Modern Irenicsim has recently been published by Oxford University Press in the Oxford Studies in Historical Theology series. Not only is this excellent scholarship on Bucer, but Bucer's views on justification are entirely relevant for the current justification debate. It is unfortunate that Bucer has been overshadowed by Luther and Calvin. The description of the book is as follows: Martin Bucer has usually been portrayed as a diplomat who attempted to reconcile divergent theological views, sometimes at any cost, or as a pragmatic pastor who was more concerned with ethics than theology. These representations have led to the view that Bucer was a theological light-weight, rightly placed in the shadow of Luther and Calvin. This book makes a different argument. Bucer was an ecclesial diplomat and a pragmatic pastor, yet his ecclesial and practical approache...

"Is not the great defect of our education today--a defect traceable through all the disquieting symptoms of trouble that I have mentioned--that although we often succeed in teaching our pupils "subjects," we fail lamentably on the whole in teaching them how to think: they learn everything, except the art of learning.-- Dorothy Sayers, " The Lost Tools of Learning " I have placed a link to this excellent essay under the Liberal Arts heading in the right column.

There is a day long Conference in Uppsala entitled "Faces of Apocalyptics" . There are three papers and two are by John Collins and Adela Yarbro Collins. If Sweden were only closer... "Apocalyptics", by the way, is being used to refer to "Apocalypticism". Another example of the slippery use of the terminology related to apocalypses.