Friday, January 28, 2005

Bibles

My last post about the TNIV has made be curious about bibles in general. I ran across a couple of interesting versions.

The Complete Jewish Bible is a version paraphrased by a Messianic Jew in Israel. This site has an example of how this version compares with the NIV. I know a lot of Messianics probably love this bible, if only because it translates "Law" as "Torah" in the New Testament. Messianic Jews often don't have a lot of affection for the early Church fathers who really liked Greek culture and logic to the exclusion of their Hebrew equivalents. Anti-semitic heresies like Marcionism didn't help.

Unfortunately I can't help but be skeptical about a paraphrase version of the bible written by one person. It just raises my hackles and screams theological bias at me. But I wouldn't mind reading it with critical eye. Supposedly, he takes time to point out Messianic prophecy throughout the Old Testament (Tanakh) too.

Another bible I would like to get is the NAS Hebrew-Greek Key Word Study Bible. A guy in my bible study has one of these. Its like a mix of Interlinear Bible, Strong's Concordance, and several other things all in one handy tome. I have some skepticism about it though. The Strong's in this bible seems to diverge from mine frequently and I don't know which one is correct.

No comments: