Obviously, Scripture is freely available on the web from sites like biblegateway.com and many others. Despite this, I find many who don't follow the Messiah afraid to go to such sites, they'd rather shy away from anything remotely religious. Any URL with "bible" in the name is going to scare away many, making it less approachable to unbelievers.
Going with this thought, I'm undertaking what I hope you will find to be an interesting project: Epistles of Paul.
There are several reasons I wanted to create Epistles of Paul:
- To give an open, intellectual forum for discussion on Paul's writings in particular, and religion in general.
- To make the writings of Paul more accessible to unbelievers on the web: tech-saavy unbelievers feel uncomfortable visiting sites like biblegateway.com, but there are many who regulary visit blogs. Paul's letters in blog form, in standard modern-day English, is also more accessible to most than King James' thou's, ye's, art's and lo & behold's.
- To write emulations of Paul's letters, addressing modern issues to groups of people today: Catholics, Protestants, Muslims, Secularists, to name a few. While Paul was a zealous teacher and follower of the Messiah -- someone that I cannot come close to in comparison -- I feel I can learn from him while giving others insight into his teachings as well.
So initially, I'm going to be posting the actual letters of Paul, starting with Romans. When all existing books are completed, I will post letters to modern people groups, religious and cultural, emulating Paul's argumentative and intellectual writing style. I hope you all will find it interesting and enlightening.
Epistles Of Paul
It's quite an undertaking to write new letters in the style of Paul. I'm sure that he would have alot to say to the various churches (although we differentiate more by denomination than by location). It kind of reminds me of some non-literal and expanded translations of Scripture, although it's very dangerous territory, because it can be self-serving -- i've heard of people deliberately re-writing Bible passages in order to make Scripture more acceptable or accessible. I'm just making the observation, no offence intended. It is my ultimate hope that people, all people, find Scripture to be interesting, convicting, and beneficial, but as time passes, that appears less likely to come true. I've spent some time thinking about accessibility of the Bible and the gospel message, and i generally don't like the idea of making it simpler, although it is our charge to tell people the gospel, and we have to use language that they understand. I think those principles are well-established within Paul's writings. One more thing -- i avoid using expanded translations at all costs, although i commonly see and hear them used in Bible study. I personally haven't found them edifying. Let me know what you think.
ReplyDeleteYeah, I thought of that too, it is dangerous territory; I don't want to push any of my personal agendas or religious doctrines on others in emulating Paul's writings. I've asked the Lord to lead me when writing, that I don't fall into the traps of condemning & judging others, but rather, staying on the path of the Messiah's message of love and humility.
ReplyDeleteI'll be sure that it's known these letters are not, by implication, inspired by God, as I believe Paul's to be. Rather, these are written as a learning tool for myself, and hopefully as an enlightening view on the modern religious systems from a Paulian perspective.
As far as making Scripture accessible, I just prefer common language to Old/Middle English, is all.
When commenting on the issue of whether to call the Messiah by his Hebrew name, Yeshua, or by his Greek-to-Latin-to-English name, Jesus, a Christian woman said, "If English was good enough for Jesus, then it's good enough for me."
:-)
Point is, contrary to the belief of some in the modern Church, Jesus was neither Greek nor English, nor did he speak either language, and he most certainly did not use "Thee", "Thou", "Art", and other King James-isms that, for their sheer mystical & enigmatic qualities, seem closer to the metal than contemporary English versions. In actuality, KJV is not even remotely close to the original manuscripts; I suspect Jesus spoke in the modern languages of the time, Hebrew and Arabic, complete with contemporary, localized slangs and euphemisms, not in some mystical language that the common man didn't understand.
With regard to translations, I spent some time looking at various translations and I believe I've found a good balance with "The Message" translation.
It was tough to find a good balance: on one end there's translations like the Contemporary English Version, where it's very easy for the common person to read and understand, but a lot of the deep Scriptural meaning is left out in the over-simplifications of the translation. On the other hand, there's translations like the several variations of the King James version; for me, King James really bad. There are poor translations (Jesus celebrating "Easter"?! haha. Or Jesus' brother Ya'akov [Jacob] having his named changed to James in honor of King James, sigh), not to mention that the language used is completely deprecated in the modern English world, and makes little sense to average people.
NIV is decent, it seems, however, it still borrows from KJV when a human is addressing God, complete with all the deprecated KJVisms.
I found "The Message" translation to be true to the point of Scripture, without going off on expansions or injections of modern theology. It seems to hold well to the actual point of each verse, while using modern language that's not overly-simplified; it seems to keep the truth of the verse intact.
I hope you find "The Message" more edifying that your experiences in Bible studies. I'm curious, what translation do you prefer? And for what reason?
Also, I'd like to hear your criticism of these letters as they're posted; unlike Paul's letters, you can tear these apart and spit them out, refute & rebuke them, they're not Scripture and totally open to all criticism like any other error-riddled human work. :-)
Thanks for stopping by and posting, I appreciate the traffic. God bless.