Archive for June, 2009
Why the Bible?
Many Christians, Muslims, and Jews regard the Bible as inspired by God yet written by a variety of imperfect men over thousands of years. Many others, who identify themselves as Bible-believing Christians, regard both the New and Old Testament as the undiluted Word of God, spoken by God and written down in its perfect form by humans. Still others hold the Biblical infallibility perspective, that the Bible is free from error in spiritual but not scientific matters.
Belief in sacred texts is attested to in Jewish antiquity, and this belief can also be seen in the earliest of Christian writings. Various texts of the Bible mention Divine agency in relation to prophetic writings, the most explicit being 2 Tm 3:16: “All scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.”
Translation Information about the New American Standard Bible
The New American Standard (or NAS) Bible is widely regarded as the most literally translated of 20th-century English Bible translations. According to the NAS Bible’s preface, the translators had a “Fourfold Aim” in this work:
• These publications shall be true to the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.
• They shall be grammatically correct.
• They shall be understandable.
• They shall give the Lord Jesus Christ His proper place, the place which the Word gives Him; therefore, no work will ever be personalized.
As its name implies, the NAS bible is a revision of the American Standard Version of 1901. This translation was begun as an alternative to the Revised Standard Version (1946–1952/1971), itself a revision of the ASV, but considered by many to be theologically liberal. Using the ASV as its English base, the NAS Bible’s translators revised the ASV as literally as possible.
Seeing the need for a literal, modern translation of the English Bible, the translators sought to produce a contemporary English Bible while maintaining a word-for-word translation style. In cases where word-for-word literalness was determined to be unacceptable for modern readers, changes were made in the direction of more current idioms. In such instances, the more literal renderings were indicated in footnotes.
The greatest perceived strength of the NAS Bible is its reliability and fidelity to the original languages, which, along with other literal translations, also allows for ambiguities in the text’s meaning.
Gifts of the Magi
The Three Wise Men (also referred to as the Three Kings and as the Magi) has always been a part of a nativity scene included in the celebrations of Christmas. The three Wise Men, three Kings or Kings from the East are said to have visited Jesus after his birth, bearing gifts.
The three gifts of the magi are explicitly identified in the book of Matthew: gold, frankincense, and myrrh. That they are all ordinary gifts for a king - myrrh being commonly used as an anointing oil, frankincense as a perfume, and gold as a valuable.