Tag Archives: Common English Bible

This Week’s Winner of a Copy of the Common English Bible Is…

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Esteban Vazquez!  Congrats, Estee!

I’m giving away ONE MORE COPY- with the winner to be announced next Thursday.  This is your final opportunity to get one of the best, most accurate, and most readable copies of the Bible in English published in the last 20 years.

The Common English Bible is committed to the whole church of Jesus Christ. To achieve this, the CEB represents the work of a diverse team with broad scholarship, including the work of over one hundred and twenty scholars—men and women from twenty-four faith traditions in American, African, Asian, European and Latino communities. As a result, the English translation of ancient words has an uncommon relevance for a broad audience of Bible readers—from children to scholars.

Once again, this will be the last copy I give away- so comment away as to why it should be yours.  And, Estee, email me your address so I can have your copy sent!

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The Winner of This Week’s Copy of the Common English Bible Is…

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Jeremy O’Clair!  Congrats to Jeremy and to the several who entered I say, try again this week!  There are only two more chances so your opportunities are running out.

The Common English Bible is not simply a revision or update of an existing translation. It is a bold new translation designed to meet the needs of Christians as they work to build a strong and meaningful relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

A key goal of the translation team was to make the Bible accessible to a broad range of people; it’s written at a comfortable level for over half of all English readers. As the translators did their work, reading specialists working with seventy-seven reading groups from more than a dozen denominations review the texts to ensure a smooth and natural reading experience. Easy readability can enhance church worship and participation, and personal Bible study. It also encourages children and youth to discover the Bible for themselves, perhaps for the very first time.

Again, enter to win a copy for yourself or someone you know.  Winners are announced each Thursday.

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A Satisfied Common English Bible Reader

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Laine Clayton emails-

Thanks for recommending the CEB…I finally tried it and I LOVE IT!

Laine is a sweet person and what I guess you’d call the ‘average Bible reader’. She’s just the sort of person the CEB had in mind, I think, when they did their work. Her’s is the very sort of endorsement that the publishers of the CEB should value most. My opinion and the views of other professional biblical exegetes are skewed by years of intense and meticulous work and our perspective isn’t the same as the folk who read the bible a chapter a day or a few verses at meal times. Laine is normal, and we are not.

If you’d like to experience the CEB for yourself and would like a copy the contest here continues. Comment here if you want to and you may end up the chosen.

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Christian Book is Carrying the Common English Bible Now

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They’ve got the whole collection, at their typically excellent (beating Amazon the greedy) prices.  And speaking of the CEB, the winner of this week’s copy (in my weekly giveaway) is Dennis Gray!

If you’d like to throw your name in the hat for a copy, all you have to do is say so in a comment.  The next winner will be announced next Thursday.

And if you’re just now hearing about the CEB you can learn a lot more here.   And if smaller print isn’t for you, you’ll be happy to know that Large Print Editions arrive in March 2012!   It’s a grand translation and I’m glad to help them spread the word.

The Winner This Week of a copy of the Common English Bible

Posted on by Jim

Is Steven Shipley!  And yes, I’m still giving away copies (as authorized by the good people at the CEB).  Each Thursday I announce the week’s winner.  If you entered and didn’t win, try again.  Just tell me why, in comments, you want a copy.

The CEB is a grand translation and quite useful indeed.  Especially for persons unfamiliar with the Bible and afraid to use older translations because they make little to no sense.  I’ll be giving away one copy each week for quite a few months (through the end of January).

If you’d like to learn more, visit here.  And if you’d like to interact with the CEB folk, you can do it on Facebook orTwitter.

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Every Christian a Missourian

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Missouri is called the ‘Show Me’ State.  Every Christian should be a Missourian. At least that’s what 1 John 5:1-2 (CEB) suggests:

Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born from God. Whoever loves someone who is a parent loves the child born to the parent. This is how we know that we love the children of God: when we love God and keep God’s commandments.

Those who are Christians and worthy of the name love God.  And, they do what God says.  They ‘show’ the world that they aren’t simply simple minded ‘spiritualists’ who ‘love God’ in some sort of immaterial and inconsequential non-concrete way.  They prove their love for God by doing what God commands.

It stands to reason, therefore, that those who do not keep God’s commandments do not, in fact, love God.  Oh sure, they may stomp their feet and protest their ethereal ‘love of God’ but the proof is in the pudding.  If it were true, they would ‘show me’, and you, and everyone else.

But, and most importantly, Christians have to ‘show me’ to themselves.  Infelicitously put as that is, what I’m suggesting is that Christian folk are required to put up or shut up by first ‘examining themselves’.  Only then will they be able to help remove the speck from their less than sincere brother’s eye.

The Common English Bible Doesn’t Always Get it Right

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I do enjoy, and appreciate, the CEB (which is why I’m taking part in their ‘blog tour’).  But it sometimes misses the boat.  For example

When God began to create the heavens and the earth— the earth was without shape or form, it was dark over the deep sea, and God’s wind swept over the waters (Gen 1:1-2).

First, the verb translated ‘began to create’ is a perfect tense verb in Hebrew, not an ingressive. It can only properly be translated ‘created’ implying, as only a perfect verb can, past action with present implications. That is, God created and creation continues to this moment. Certainly not, however, ‘God began to create’. I suspect this rendition was chosen as an accommodation to modern scientific theory. Such theory may or may not be right but there is no reason at all to believe for half a second that the author of Genesis didn’t believe God created creation directly through personal intervention and not through some modern idea of evolutionary process.

Second, ‘over the deep sea’ is both cumbersome and unnecessary and even a bit misleading since ‘al peney tehom’ is literally ‘over the face of the deep’ and speaks not of the ocean per se but the ‘dark depths’ – that is, the uncontrolled, unexplored, mysterious realm where men couldn’t go. The sea is certainly included here but it isn’t just the sea that houses the formlessness and emptiness the author has in mind.

Third, and finally, ‘God’s wind swept over the waters’ is unfortunate. Better would be ‘God’s breath hovered over the waters’ because it isn’t some sort of wind described here but the breath, the life giving power of God who breaths not just into the nostrils of man but over the whole of chaotic creation itself.

So, in somewhat of an amplified rendering, we end up with

‘By way of beginning: God created everything.  The earth was mis-shaped and chaotic and then God exhaled on it.’

And The Winner Is….

Posted on by Jim

Dan Krabach!

Doug Iverson has already won and so has Kyle Owenby, Luke Chandler, and  Bacho Bordjadze.   I’ll be giving away one copy each week  for a couple more months (through the end of January).

If you haven’t won don’t despair.  You can always try again next week.

If you’d like to learn more, visit here.  And if you’d like to interact with the CEB folk, you can do it on Facebook or Twitter.

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