{"id":651,"date":"2016-02-17T18:11:06","date_gmt":"2016-02-17T18:11:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/?p=651"},"modified":"2016-02-17T18:12:44","modified_gmt":"2016-02-17T18:12:44","slug":"on-translating-the-old-testament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/?p=651","title":{"rendered":"On Translating the Old Testament"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just finished translating the Old Testament. \u201cExcuse me?\u201d you ask. Well, about eight years ago Philip Law (then of Westminster John Knox) invited me to write a series of commentaries called \u201cThe Old Testament for Everyone.\u201d When I was nearly done (the last ones will come out this year) he asked if we could bring together the translation elements in each volume and produce the complete translation on its own. It would also mean my translating the remaining twenty per cent that wasn\u2019t included in the commentaries.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t seem a big task, but it took much longer than I thought. The bits I had omitted were often the difficult bits. But also I hadn\u2019t needed to worry about consistency when I was working book by book. When the translation was in one volume, there needed to be consistency. So I\u2019ve spent several hours almost every day over the past year or so just working through the translation of the Old Testament again with nothing much on my desk but the Hebrew text and a dictionary.
\nIt\u2019s been an extraordinary experience. The depth and the wonder of the words I have been reading have come home to me more and more. I\u2019ve sat there marveling that I\u2019m privileged to let this sacred text soak into me. I\u2019ve felt more and more that I have been on hallowed ground. Yes, they are holy scriptures. Of course it\u2019s because they\u2019re all about God. So simply reading them for hours every day has made we wonder at the God whose activity lies behind them and who is the most prominent character in them.
\n(Until it\u2019s published next year, the translation is on my website, under the tabs for different parts of the Old Testament. There\u2019s also a paper about translation which includes some reflections, under the \u201cInterpretation\u201d tab.)<\/p>\n

John<\/p>\n

\"20151202_104823\"<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve just finished translating the Old Testament. \u201cExcuse me?\u201d you ask. Well, about eight years ago Philip Law (then of Westminster John Knox) invited me to write a series of commentaries called \u201cThe Old Testament for Everyone.\u201d When I was nearly done (the last ones will come out this year) he asked if we could […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-651","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5VlqB-av","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=651"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":653,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/651\/revisions\/653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=651"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=651"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/johnandkathleenshow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=651"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}