I
New Testament Perspectives, a fine blog which I saw for the first time yesterday, has an interesting interview with Bob and Bill Mounce about the making of The Zondervan Greek and English Interlinear New Testament, their most recently published joint effort. (Samples here and here.) One of the more attractive features for me is that they depart from the standard "interlinear translation," offering instead the elder Mounce's more idiomatic, contextual rendering under the Greek text. Says Bill Mounce:
II
Biblioblogdom is abuzz with news and reviews of the NLT Study Bible. (Sample here; Iyov has a small round-up of links here, together with a fascinating look at another "living" translation of yesteryear.) I'm glad to note that I've been intimately acquainted with the New Living Translation since its release in 1996: I bought a copy hot-off-the-press, and used it in short order as my teaching text for a Bible study on Acts that I lead during my freshman year. I had a rather decent reading knowledge of Greek by then, and I was consistently impressed by how well the NLT rendered St Luke's narrative—lively, engagingly, idiomatically, and above all, accurately. Eventually I found a copy of the NLT in a "Catholic Reference Edition" including the deuterocanonical books accepted by Roman Catholics; this I have kept close at hand ever since. (And do take note of this, Bible watchers: in stark contrast to the IBS and Zondervan's apparent resistance to produce a TNIV Apocrypha, Tyndale has already published an edition containing many of these books. Surely they could be persuaded to produce in time a full NLT Apocrypha, as well! In the end, it seems to me that this kind of flexibility on Tyndale's part is an important reason behind what Rick Mansfield has termed the "rise of the New Living Translation.")
The NLT appeared in a second edition in 2004, which was further fine tuned in 2007; it is this latter text that is used in the new NLT Study Bible. I have seen neither of these, but I understand that the revisions represent a significant improvement of the translation. Further, according to Sean Harrison, general editor of the NLTSB, the focus of this new study Bible may be described as follows:
III
Thanks to the links in Matthew Montonini's above mentioned blog, I came across Douglas Moo's Biblical Studies webpage, where I read that among Moo's future projects is "a commentary on Galatians (for Baker in their BECNT series)." Now, it was my understanding up until now that the Galatians volume in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament would be written, in fact, by none other than the infallible Moisés Silva himself. This would not be the first time a commentary series replaces the author of one of its projected volumes, of course; but I find the change a bit disappointing, given Silva's lifelong project to write a commentary on Galatians. But of course, the matter may only be that Silva's manuscript, like Hoehner's on Ephesians, has grown beyond the editorial limits of the BECNT and will require publication as an independent volume (or volumes). This would undoubtedly be the happier scenario: commentaries by both Moo and Silva would offer rich exegetical fare to their readers, and each book would significantly contribute to the literature on Galatians. Here's hoping! [UPDATE: There are apparently a few other potentially excellent commentaries on Galatians in the works: Robert Van Voorst, for the Eerdmans Critical Commentary; D. A. Carson, for the Pillar New Testament Commentary; and Thomas Schreiner for the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary. H/T: Parableman.]
New Testament Perspectives, a fine blog which I saw for the first time yesterday, has an interesting interview with Bob and Bill Mounce about the making of The Zondervan Greek and English Interlinear New Testament, their most recently published joint effort. (Samples here and here.) One of the more attractive features for me is that they depart from the standard "interlinear translation," offering instead the elder Mounce's more idiomatic, contextual rendering under the Greek text. Says Bill Mounce:
"Dad wrote (sic) a great translation that isn’t wooden; it is readable and shows young Greek students how translation should be done. It is a great teaching tool. For an interlinear, it is quite dynamic. For example, it does not use the same English word for the same Greek word but translates according to context. Some conjunctions are translated as punctuation, all as it should be. Typographically, when you are reading Dad’s translation, if you just ignore the superscript italicized words the English makes great sense."I was unaware of this new volume, so many thanks to Matthew Montonini for securing and posting the interview!
II
Biblioblogdom is abuzz with news and reviews of the NLT Study Bible. (Sample here; Iyov has a small round-up of links here, together with a fascinating look at another "living" translation of yesteryear.) I'm glad to note that I've been intimately acquainted with the New Living Translation since its release in 1996: I bought a copy hot-off-the-press, and used it in short order as my teaching text for a Bible study on Acts that I lead during my freshman year. I had a rather decent reading knowledge of Greek by then, and I was consistently impressed by how well the NLT rendered St Luke's narrative—lively, engagingly, idiomatically, and above all, accurately. Eventually I found a copy of the NLT in a "Catholic Reference Edition" including the deuterocanonical books accepted by Roman Catholics; this I have kept close at hand ever since. (And do take note of this, Bible watchers: in stark contrast to the IBS and Zondervan's apparent resistance to produce a TNIV Apocrypha, Tyndale has already published an edition containing many of these books. Surely they could be persuaded to produce in time a full NLT Apocrypha, as well! In the end, it seems to me that this kind of flexibility on Tyndale's part is an important reason behind what Rick Mansfield has termed the "rise of the New Living Translation.")
The NLT appeared in a second edition in 2004, which was further fine tuned in 2007; it is this latter text that is used in the new NLT Study Bible. I have seen neither of these, but I understand that the revisions represent a significant improvement of the translation. Further, according to Sean Harrison, general editor of the NLTSB, the focus of this new study Bible may be described as follows:
"[T]he NLT Study Bible focuses on the meaning and message of the text as understood in and through the original historical context. I don’t see other study Bibles focusing so fully on that. Some study Bibles focus on helping people to accept a particular doctrinal system, while others focus on “personal application.” Others simply provide interesting details about the context, language, grammar, etc., without asking how that information will impact people’s understanding of the text. Still others focus on a particular type of study methodology—topical study, word study, etc. Our goal, by contrast, was to provide everything we could that would help the readers understand the Scripture text more fully as the original human authors and readers themselves would have understood it" (emphasis his).Needles to say, this all sounds very promising, and one hopes that these goals have been carried out as thoroughly as possible (but note that David Ker, who already has his hands on a copy, finds an unduly devotional bit in the notes to Genesis!). This would be much in the NLTSB's advantage: a consistent, "hard" emphasis on hermeneutics and exegesis would make this volume useful even to readers beyond Protestant tradition(s) who may appreciate the NLT. In any case, taking advantage of the announcement on the NLT Blog, I requested an advance preview copy; just yesterday I heard from Laura Bartlett at Tyndale, who informed me that she will be sending me one in short order. Many thanks to her for this; I'm already looking forward to sharing my impressions on this volume here.
III
Thanks to the links in Matthew Montonini's above mentioned blog, I came across Douglas Moo's Biblical Studies webpage, where I read that among Moo's future projects is "a commentary on Galatians (for Baker in their BECNT series)." Now, it was my understanding up until now that the Galatians volume in the Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament would be written, in fact, by none other than the infallible Moisés Silva himself. This would not be the first time a commentary series replaces the author of one of its projected volumes, of course; but I find the change a bit disappointing, given Silva's lifelong project to write a commentary on Galatians. But of course, the matter may only be that Silva's manuscript, like Hoehner's on Ephesians, has grown beyond the editorial limits of the BECNT and will require publication as an independent volume (or volumes). This would undoubtedly be the happier scenario: commentaries by both Moo and Silva would offer rich exegetical fare to their readers, and each book would significantly contribute to the literature on Galatians. Here's hoping! [UPDATE: There are apparently a few other potentially excellent commentaries on Galatians in the works: Robert Van Voorst, for the Eerdmans Critical Commentary; D. A. Carson, for the Pillar New Testament Commentary; and Thomas Schreiner for the Zondervan Exegetical Commentary. H/T: Parableman.]
