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Theyear 2003 will go down as the era when teenage girls had their choice of reading materials: Seventeen, YM, Teen Vogue, or the New Testament.
Revolve (Thomas Nelson) is a New Testament in the garb of a girl's teen magazine, complete with fashion tips ("When you feel attractive, it puts you in a good mood, so use that mood to be kind to those around you."), relationship insights ("Is your latest crush really popular? . . . What would you do if he asked you out? Would you freak out? I can't believe it!"), and a continuing Q&A section called "Blab."
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Until they produce a parallel edition for hip, young preachers ("Did the deacons really say that? Oh, man!"), we'll just have to settle for our biblical text in one of the thousands of other version, editions, and packaging approaches now available.
The reality is that today's preacher is inundated with choices in the area of Bibles and Bible reference resources. That's why each year, Preaching tries to help in recognizing some of the more helpful tools that have become available in the past year.
Bibles
In his book The Word of God in English (Crossway), Wheaton professor Leland Ryken opines, "English Bible translation has lost its way in the past half century. We are farther from having a reliable and stable text than ever before. The only Bible reader who is not perplexed is the one who sticks with just one version and does not inquire any more broadly into what is going on. English Bible readers deserve a translation that they can trust and admire because it represents standards of excellence and dignity."
Ryken — who was part of the team that developed the new English Standard Version (ESV) — argues against the "dynamic equivalent" approach that many contemporary translations adopt as their model. One of the main reasons for his criticism is that such translations "can short-circuit the interpretive process . . . by making preemptive interpretive decisions, with the result that readers never have a chance to make the interpretive decision themselves; by reducing multiple meanings of a biblical statement to a single meaning and offering that meaning as a sole meaning; be resolving ambiguous statements in a single direction instead of allowing the ambiguity of the original text to stand; by interpreting images and figures of speech instead of allowing them to stand in their original, uninterpreted form."
Such issues become an important consideration for those called to interpret and proclaim God's Word for God's people. We stand before congregations that carry with them a dozen or more different translations of scripture — if they even brought a Bible to church — and out of that chaos we must find a way to help people to understand God's Word and its meaning for their lives. That was a difficult task even when everyone carried a King James Version under their arms!