“The world’s most celebrated hyperpolyglot relied on the same tools given to first-year language-learners today. The conclusion? Hyperpolyglots may begin with talent, but they aren’t geniuses. They simply enjoy tasks that are drudgery to normal people. The talent and enjoyment drive a virtuous cycle that pushes them to feats others simply shake their heads at, admiration mixed with no small amount of incomprehension.”

Read on…

…for those who love the book and especially the Book, the Bible, the rise of electronic reading devices should be the least of our concerns. Electronic reading devices like the Kindle, and even tablets like the iPad, preserve many of the essential features of the codex; and in this, they are quite distinct from other “screens” on which we might read. To decry the move from the book to the screen is simply to employ categories too crude for the phenomena that are being described.

A codex, by the way, is “a book in the format used for modern books, with multiple quires or gatherings (sheets of paper or vellum in multiples of two which are folded and stitched through) typically bound together and given a cover” and looks like this (yep a book):

Moreover, Jacob knows well the connection between technology and Bible translation:

…Christians tend to be a proselytizing people, and the message that they bring will always be entangled with technologies of reading.

Read more…

(HT: First Thoughts)

Please use the version available at http://sblgntforkindle.appspot.com

Original Post

My boy Timothy Lee is unstoppable. First, I posted my Kindle version of the SBLGNT. Then, Timothy Lee left a comment announcing his Kindle version which incorporated fast dictionary look up of passages. Now he’s updated his version to include the SBLGNT critical/textual apparatus and the front matter. This is the Kindle version I like most. Did I mention that Timothy is 16 years old?! What a brother!

Release Notes

2011-06-10 sblgnt-timothylee-2.0.prc

NEW – apparatus included. When a verse has a text-critical note associated with it then the verse number becomes a link you can navigate to and click on to take you to the corresponding note.  From there you can hit the back button to go back to your previous location in the main text.

NEW – the front matter (preface, introduction, etc.), not including the table of contents, has been included

CHANGED - Certain in-text elements of the critical apparatus have been modified so as to make their inclusion possible. See PDF.

2011-04-03 sblgnt-timothylee.prc

See details here.

“He said to himself, from his earliest years that God suffers in the great multitudes whom his sacred word cannot reach. Religious truth is captive in a small number of manuscript books, which guard the common treasure, instead of diffusing it. Let us break the seal which holds the holy things; give wings to the truth, that by means of speech, no longer written at great expense by the hand that wearies itself, but multiplied as the air by an unwearied machine, it may fly to seek every soul born into the world!”

The invention of the printing press was but the breaking of one seal which “holds the holy things.” The aim of Bible translation is to further “give wings to the truth.”

In the end, I decided on and ordered a UBS Reader’s Greek New Testament (one without textual notes as I already have a UBS GNT, but without dictionary), a Hebrew Bible Insert (a concise syntactical guide to keep with your Hebrew Bible), a Greek New Testament Insert and a volume edited by Dr. Dave Black called Linguistics and New Testament Interpretation: Essays on Discourse Analysis. Why the last book? Well, while I’m familiar with discourse analysis, this passing comment on Dr. Black’s blog really convicted me:

5:54 PM Got the parts but now lack the proper wrenches. Can’t do the work without the right tools. It’s like trying to interpret a Greek letter without knowing anything about discourse analysis.

Who knew plumbing could be a means of sanctification!?

As you may be able to tell the books I chose reflect a investment for the long-run rather than temporary thrills. With slimming down my library I’ve had to make a lot of choices concerning books and which ones I’ll keep. My new aim is to hang onto and acquire those book which will most likely benefit those whom I am preparing to serve through work with Wycliffe as a Bible translator.

I see it this way: I am one to whom much has been given (e.g., the gospel!); therefore I must give much away. I’m not just talking about books but even more so education. I went to seminary to give it all away. I study linguistics to give it all away in the form of Bible translation. And look at this blessing of a $50 gift certificate. (Thank you, WTS Books!) I can only use that to give more away.

You might be thinking that a library would never want that kooky pseudo-Christian how’d-it-get-published mess you unearthed in your parent’s basement or the random book you snagged in a thrift store far, far away, but you’d be wrong! I’d argue–despite the fact I hate people saying “I’d argue” because they never actually argue their point, but rely on the assumed force of “I’d argue” to be blunt enough to bull the argument over–I’d argue that that is precisely the book you should give. Somebody sometime will need your book in their research.

Check this out as a testimony to bibliotec benefaction. In the batch of books I recently donated there was one that I’ve had for years that I snagged from a rather fundy Baptist conference I attended while in college. I donated that action to my library and now SEBTS, according to WorldCat, is the only library in North Carolina to have a copy! I’ve also got a book on how Christians should respond to Y2K. Y2K! Somebody will need that book. And look at it this way: when you give a book to your library, you’re making it available to the world via interlibrary loan. My fundy book or my Y2K book could go anywhere in the world because I gave it up for my library. Won’t you do the same? Softly and tenderly your library’s calling…

The thrust of the preceding chapters can be summarized very briefly. The Crusades were not unprovoked. They were not the first round of European colonialism. They were not conducted for land, loot, or converts. The crusaders were not barbarians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. They sincerely believed that they served in God’s battalions.¹

With this in mind what I find particularly interesting in the closing chapter is Stark’s very brief interaction with Karen Armstrong’s writing on the Crusades. In her Holy War: The Crusades and Their Impact on Today’s World she completely throws the West under the bus, which is especially disconcerting given her so-called Charter for Compassion (“a cooperative effort to restore not only compassionate thinking but, more importantly, compassionate action to the center of religious, moral and political life”). Apart from selective use of history, what I find disconcerting is not that Armstrong is critical of the West–Stark is as much in this work–but the default antagonism to the West that is to me a betrayal of one’s own heritage. This default stance against the West baffles me. Compassion for Muslim victims of Christian crusaders is trendy, but taboo is compassion for Christians ravaged by Islam advancing by the sword in the centuries leading up to the Crusades. Compassion must supercede an inherit antagonism to one’s own heritage and to one’s perceived historical
“enemies.”

Footnotes

Far from regulating biblical interpretation arbitrarily, doctrinal frameworks challenge new generations to recognize their own cultural assumptions and to revise them in light of how the church has understood Scripture as a whole.

Daniel J. Treier in Introducing Theological Interpretation of Scripture (p. 77)

You can view the complete list of books in the WTSBooks enews archive.