Where did the Bible Come From? Week 6: Translations (video)
Last night was the second last part of the 7 week study – Where did the Bible Come From? The topic: translations. As you may guess, this was a bit of an adventurous topic for me to teach – that’s right, me with my poor Spanish teaching a bunch of Mexicans about Spanish translations! 😉
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But of course it was really more about giving them the tools to find good versions to use, and not about me giving them all the answers.
As you’ll see in the video below, I set up a bit of a Bible translation museum, with 17 different Spanish translations throughout history, starting in 1432 AD. Most of them had the name, a date, the front page or cover, and a sample text. I ended up using the first part of Psalm 18 as the sample for most of them (there were a couple where I couldn’t find that specific text in time for the study). Of course, there were many many versions I left out!
So, of course there were some of the earliest translations, the first printed Spanish Bible, (actually, Old Testament only in that case, as I recall), the first Mexican translation (the Vence Bible, in 25 volumes!), the first official Roman Catholic Version, and many popular versions of today.
So everyone got to wander around and read and compare various versions. Then we talked about differences between versions, manuscripts, the Textus Receptus, thoughts about the pros and cons of various versions, things like that.
I was able to come up with a nifty list of Spanish translations available free online. I’m actually going to hand it out next week, because I didn’t have a chance to print it for this week. But I’ll try to post it here for those who are interested.
Next week is the last week of the study! I hope we can pull everything together in a very practical way – talk a bit about what exactly we mean when we say that the Bible is the Word of God, have some fun, and, one way or another, make food a part of the evening. 😉
2 March 2011 @ 8:05 pm
that’s really creative!! cool idea!! =)
3 March 2011 @ 2:39 pm
Sure sounded like you were all having a hilarious time! I agree with Lauren, that was a great idea putting up samples of all those translations. I applaud you for all the preparation you must have done and presenting this study in your second language.
And I did hear that “Look holy!” that sounded like it came from your mouth Jim. Funny guy!
5 March 2011 @ 6:13 pm
The bible came from the prophets that wrote the bible, who lived in Israel. There were some scriptures also found in Massad and the caves near the temple. Oh, okay your more talking about spanish translations… seems like people were enlightened.
5 March 2011 @ 7:58 pm
Well, we had fun!
As Nathanael kept telling me as I talked about the title for this study – “It came from GOD!” Yes, well – exactly! But the question really is one of transmission. How did it get from Him – to the prophets and apostles – to us, today, here?
This coming week we’re going to get back to the basics anyway – what exactly do we mean when we say this is the “Word of God”?