Working for the Word - a Bible translation podcast

In this episode we have the pleasure of talking to biblical scholar Dr. Drew Longacre. He holds a Ph. D. from the University of Birmingham and has recently been a researcher at Cambridge Digital Bible Research on the Psalms: Layer by Layer project, which we did an episode on in the past. From 2016–2021, he was the postdoctoral researcher on the a project called “The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Dig...

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Bitcoin represents a transformative tool for missionaries, offering a secure, transparent, and ethical alternative to traditional financial systems. By embracing Bitcoin, missionaries can protect themselves and those they serve from economic instability and corruption. Moreover, Bitcoin’s alignment with biblical principles of fairness and justice makes it a fitting choice for those committed to up...

Am I dogmatic about using "Yahweh" as opposed to other pronunciations? What about Yehovah? How do we end up with the pronunciation of "Yahweh" anyway? Doesn't the Septuagint provide conclusive evidence for how to pronounce the divine name? These are some closing thoughts and loose ends I wanted to address. ⁠⁠Read the book⁠⁠⁠⁠ . ⁠⁠⁠⁠ workingfortheword.com ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  |  ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠...

The previous episodes in this series considered  God’s desire for us to use his name ,  how the pronunciation was lost , and  how the New Testament writers handled the matter . It remains, finally, to consider how it has been handled by translators since the Reformation. In that time there have been various departures from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which rendered the divine name as  Dominus  (“Lord/...

We know that the inhibition for pronouncing God’s name came  before  Christianity, although we don’t know how widespread it was. It’s possible that rendering the divine name as “Lord” ( kurios ) had already been a strong tradition for centuries by the time we get to Jesus and the apostles. What’s clear is that the New Testament manuscripts we have all follow the tradition that the Septuagint set,...

This is part 2 of a short series on the divine name. It’s important to recognize right up front that we simply do not know with absolute certainty how God’s name was originally pronounced. The common English pronunciation of “Yahweh” is an educated guess, but we’ll never know for sure how it sounded when God spoke it to Moses. Two key things prevent us from knowing: (1) Hebrew was written without...

A few years ago I did a series on the pronunciation and translation of the divine name here on this podcast. It was a long series that eventually turned into a book . Now, a while back the Text and Canon Institute asked me to do a four-part series on the divine name for their website, which forced me to significantly condense the highlights of the book into smaller, less technical articles. So as...

Back in 2021 I had Dave Brunn on this podcast to talk about his amazing book One Bible, Many Versions . If you haven’t heard parts 1 and 2 of that interview, I highly recommend going back to listen when you finish this episode. Dave recently published an article titled Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding . It would be an understatement to say that this is a...

This is the second in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new ⁠...

This is the first in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new sem...

This is an episode about consulting, specifically addressing some challenges involved with the current consulting model, and possibly some ways it could improve. It also covers some difficulties that may arise when mentoring a consultant in training (CIT) or being mentored as a CIT. Recently I supervised a CIT doing practice checking, and I want to share some lessons learned from that experience....

I want to introduce you to an initiative called Global Bible Tools , which aims to provide the global Church with access to the same advanced biblical language tools that the West enjoys. This includes lexicons, grammars, and text critical information. In this podcast we'll discuss the importance of these tools for serious study of the Bible and Bible translation, and propose a way to make the...

In my vast array of interactions with intelligent people working in Bible translation, I have learned something: most approach the issue of copyright out of complete ignorance, and sometimes with a great deal of pride and irrationality. I used to be one of those people. So I'm doing my best to share what I've learned. "For nearly a century, copyright legislation has been subtly but ef...

"For the people by the people." That is the slogan of The Word for the World , which is a Bible translation org that we’re going to be learning about in this episode. They exist to equip language groups for mother tongue translation and literacy development. Since 1981, they have been working towards this goal through translation, training, literacy, and partnerships with like-minded org...

As I said in the last episode, I’ve been working on the Selling Jesus project , which is now well underway with a ton of content. Please check out the website sellingJesus.org and you’ll find enough reading material to keep you busy all Christmas vacation. Also, it would mean the world to me if you would help boost the views of the first Selling Jesus video on YouTube , which is on the homepage of...

This episode will just be a brief announcement that I’ll be taking some time away from this podcast in order to focus on some other important things right now. I may be posting sporadically, but I’m not sure how often. There are a lot of episodes I’d like to do in the future. Please visit sellingJesus.org and also help spread this video far and wide. Book mentioned: God and Mammon by Noll Song at...

MA in Bible Translation from Nida Institute: https://www.nidaschool.org/ma-bible-translation Seed Company Residency Program: https://seedcompany.com/residency/ Wycliffe's convergence program for training consultants: https://www.wycliffe.org/blog/posts/6-ways-convergence-will-prepare-you-to-become-a-translation-consultant Word for the World's training programs: https://training.twftw.org/...

This episode is going to be a little different and more informal. My wife, Bethany, and I had a really great conversation the other day about interlinears and their different uses for second language acquisition, as well as the subject of reader's bibles. So we decided to record a second version of it to share, because we hope there are some helpful things we can add to people's thinking a...

In this episode we continue our conversation with Dr. Alan Bunning, Executive Director for the  Center for New Testament Restoration . Check out the  project overview . workingfortheword.com  |  my books  |  twitter  |  music  |   Hebrew  |  academic articles  |  facebook  |  contact  |  download all episodes for offline

When people think about starting a translation of the NT, they usually need to decide which Greek text they’re going to use as a source text. Unlike OT translation where everyone defaults to the MT, there are more than one NT source texts to choose from, like the UBS, the Nestle-Aland, the Byzantine text, the Textus-Receptus and others. And some of the modern, popular ones are locked down by copyr...

Back in 2021 an article entitled Just How Broken Is the Bible Translation Industry ? came out on MinistryWatch. People keep asking me what I think about it. I've waited a long time to let the organizations critiqued in the article have a chance to speak for themselves and respond to the article, but they never did. This episode is my summary and thoughts on the article, and an encouragement to the...

Raised in the jungles of Venezuela by missionary parents in a vibrant Christian home, Tabitha Price is well-acquainted with the challenges of Christian ministry. Tabitha married her high school sweetheart, Joel, and together they attended New Tribes Bible college in preparation for missionary service. After that, she earned a bachelor degree from Southwest Bible College and Seminary and spent eigh...

ChatGPT is considered by some to be the biggest technological revolution since the iPhone. In this episode we take it for a spin to see what it knows about Bible translation and test the limits of its expertise regarding more challenging biblical studies. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline

Now that we’ve learned more about internalization from Katie Frost, it’s time to talk about a new tool that recently came out for actually doing oral Bible translation projects. It’s called Audio Project Manager , and it’s a free program that anyone can download and start working with right away. Nathan Payne is going to walk us through what the software does and how it can be leveraged for oral p...