You scored as Anselm. Anselm is the outstanding theologian of the medieval period.He sees man's primary problem as having failed to render unto God what we owe him, so God becomes man in Christ and gives God what he is due. You should read 'Cur Deus Homo?'
Which theologian are you? created with QuizFarm.com |
Sunday, September 17, 2006
Whch theologian are you?
On of them-there quiz thingies....
Saturday, September 16, 2006
Bible Oddity II
OK, here's is where it gets wierd.
I checked out a Barnes & Noble, for completeness' sake. They hardly had a bible section, though the store was at least as big as the Books-a-Million I visited. (To be fair, a large section was taken up by a coffee shop.) The only Catholic bible they had was an RSV Catholic Edition (how ironic), and they had a spread of NIV and NLT and KJV and NKJV. That was about it. Clearly their heart was not in their religion section.
Before that, however, I visited the Potomac Adventist Book & Health Food Store. This is a "big box" store for SDAs, complete with a bronze statue of Jesus washing Peter's feet on the sidewalk out front. As you might guess, they have a HUGE bible section. They have LOTS of KJV editions, and NKJV, and all the other big commercial versions (though they don't push the NIV as much). But they also have all the traditional modern "liberal" translations (except maybe the NAB, now that I think about it). JB, NJB, Goodspeed, Moffatt, NRSV, REB (disguised as the Oxford Annotated Bible). They had the KJV apocrypha; they had the NASB; they had Lamsa's Peshitta; they had the JPS Tanakh; and they had a slew of parallel and bog-literal versions I'd never heard of.
So here we are at a conservative Christian bookstore, and it's the only place (other than a trip downtown to the shrine or the National Cathedral) to get the translations favored by liberals. THe irony is thundering.
I checked out a Barnes & Noble, for completeness' sake. They hardly had a bible section, though the store was at least as big as the Books-a-Million I visited. (To be fair, a large section was taken up by a coffee shop.) The only Catholic bible they had was an RSV Catholic Edition (how ironic), and they had a spread of NIV and NLT and KJV and NKJV. That was about it. Clearly their heart was not in their religion section.
Before that, however, I visited the Potomac Adventist Book & Health Food Store. This is a "big box" store for SDAs, complete with a bronze statue of Jesus washing Peter's feet on the sidewalk out front. As you might guess, they have a HUGE bible section. They have LOTS of KJV editions, and NKJV, and all the other big commercial versions (though they don't push the NIV as much). But they also have all the traditional modern "liberal" translations (except maybe the NAB, now that I think about it). JB, NJB, Goodspeed, Moffatt, NRSV, REB (disguised as the Oxford Annotated Bible). They had the KJV apocrypha; they had the NASB; they had Lamsa's Peshitta; they had the JPS Tanakh; and they had a slew of parallel and bog-literal versions I'd never heard of.
So here we are at a conservative Christian bookstore, and it's the only place (other than a trip downtown to the shrine or the National Cathedral) to get the translations favored by liberals. THe irony is thundering.
Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Bible Buying Oddity
So here I am at Borders, and out of curiosity I drift over to the bible section. And what I find is really quite surprising.
If you wanted to buy a copy of the RSV, you would have been out of luck; they didn't have it. And they had a single edition/copy of the NRSV. Jerusalem Bible? They didn't have it, nor the newer edition either. New English/Revised English? Ditto. NASB? Nope. Today's English? I don't think so.
So what did they they have? Well, they had a few oddities, such as a copy of the Lamsa translation of the Peshitta. They had a fair number of New American Bible editions. But mostly what they had were King James, New King James, New International, and New Living Bible. Oh, and the English Standard Version, which, if you haven't run across it before, is a recent "conservative" redaction of the RSV.
Travelling over to Books-a-Million, I found a somewhat more restricted selection, plus the Holman Christian Standard Bible in various versions. It is apparently an attempt to produce an inerrantist formal equivalence translation (in other words, to replace the NIV, whose dynamic equivalence model ended up being criticized by almost everyone).
For an Episcopalian, the situation is passing strange. We have a canonically designated list of translations we can use, and hardly any of the bibles available at these general interest bookstores are on it. Of the current list, only the KJV, NAB, and NIV are (apparently) readily available, which is particularly an issue since the RSV is the reference version of scripture readings. So what we have is a very archaic Anglican bible, a heavily criticized RC bible (which is particular a problem because of the many textual reorderings), and a heavily criticized fundamentalist bible.
But even more interesting is what this says about what they think the bible market looks like. Now, some of this is surely distorted by publisher marketing issues. The Holman and the ESV are new translations; the NLT and NKJV and Holman are owned by specific publishers. But even so, what we see is a mass market which, with the exception of the Catholic NAB, is completely occupied by theologically conservative translations. From a strictly textual or translational perspective, they are not all conservative; the Holman, for instance, uses a modern textual basis, and the NLT is paraphrastic. But they are all connected to radically conservative Protestant groups.
What this would appear to say is that mainline Protestants are not an important bible market anymore-- or if they are, that they can be satified by strictly ceremonial copies of the KJV. You can't buy the preferred mainline versions in a regular bookstore. (I'm tempted to venture down to the Adventist bookstore, just to see.) Now, I haven't been to a Barnes & Noble, nor have I been to a variety of Borders shops. And who knows, maybe in a different city or state I might see something less odd. The two stores I did visit, however, are in two quite different communities.
And I also am not sure how long things have been this way. I haven't bought a bible in years, not because I don't own plenty (I have something like twelve different translations), but because I've come to rely on on-line bibles, except for liturgical use. For that I use my trusty RSV Common Bible, which I've had for a long time.
If you wanted to buy a copy of the RSV, you would have been out of luck; they didn't have it. And they had a single edition/copy of the NRSV. Jerusalem Bible? They didn't have it, nor the newer edition either. New English/Revised English? Ditto. NASB? Nope. Today's English? I don't think so.
So what did they they have? Well, they had a few oddities, such as a copy of the Lamsa translation of the Peshitta. They had a fair number of New American Bible editions. But mostly what they had were King James, New King James, New International, and New Living Bible. Oh, and the English Standard Version, which, if you haven't run across it before, is a recent "conservative" redaction of the RSV.
Travelling over to Books-a-Million, I found a somewhat more restricted selection, plus the Holman Christian Standard Bible in various versions. It is apparently an attempt to produce an inerrantist formal equivalence translation (in other words, to replace the NIV, whose dynamic equivalence model ended up being criticized by almost everyone).
For an Episcopalian, the situation is passing strange. We have a canonically designated list of translations we can use, and hardly any of the bibles available at these general interest bookstores are on it. Of the current list, only the KJV, NAB, and NIV are (apparently) readily available, which is particularly an issue since the RSV is the reference version of scripture readings. So what we have is a very archaic Anglican bible, a heavily criticized RC bible (which is particular a problem because of the many textual reorderings), and a heavily criticized fundamentalist bible.
But even more interesting is what this says about what they think the bible market looks like. Now, some of this is surely distorted by publisher marketing issues. The Holman and the ESV are new translations; the NLT and NKJV and Holman are owned by specific publishers. But even so, what we see is a mass market which, with the exception of the Catholic NAB, is completely occupied by theologically conservative translations. From a strictly textual or translational perspective, they are not all conservative; the Holman, for instance, uses a modern textual basis, and the NLT is paraphrastic. But they are all connected to radically conservative Protestant groups.
What this would appear to say is that mainline Protestants are not an important bible market anymore-- or if they are, that they can be satified by strictly ceremonial copies of the KJV. You can't buy the preferred mainline versions in a regular bookstore. (I'm tempted to venture down to the Adventist bookstore, just to see.) Now, I haven't been to a Barnes & Noble, nor have I been to a variety of Borders shops. And who knows, maybe in a different city or state I might see something less odd. The two stores I did visit, however, are in two quite different communities.
And I also am not sure how long things have been this way. I haven't bought a bible in years, not because I don't own plenty (I have something like twelve different translations), but because I've come to rely on on-line bibles, except for liturgical use. For that I use my trusty RSV Common Bible, which I've had for a long time.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)