In the majority world to match their common difficulty in finding adequate and healthy food supplies, or paying for medical care, there are Bible shortages. In Mobuto's Zaïre in the 1980s a cluster of poverty, mis-management and greed ensured that where there were not enough Bibles, basically anywhere far from Kinshasa, though there were handy sellers of bootleg Bibles. If you could pay the markup, you could be the proud owner of a personal copy. It only cost a couple of week's salary...
You'd think that in this Century of the Fruitbat [editor's note: private joke shared only with the other reader of Terry Pratchett ;)] te Internetz would have cured at least this problem. Bible text can be transmitted to any computer screen at virtually no cost (where there is no Internet memory sticks and even old fashioned CDs can serve as vector for the viral Word). In fact with all those phones, soon the Word can reach even the barely literate as audio Bibles freely spread their divine contagion.Apparently though if the Lusophone Bible Societies have their way instead of healthy "authorised" editions all these viral Bibles in Portuguese will be bootleg Bibles. Illegal copyright infringing pirate editions!
David has to behave himself ;) but you don't hear me laughing (see the comments here) that's tears you hear falling, for the sad, sad story of human sin and pride that holds "Bible Societies" back from actually setting the Word free :(
Labels: bible, bible.society, translation
¶ 7:54 AM
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But as yet no one has begun to comment or discuss the material on the site :( I hope this weekend to add chapter three which will mean that the following material is available:
- Talking Pictures the introductory material
- Biblical Talk of the Motherly God:
Labels: bible, biblical.studies.online, gender, god, theology
¶ 5:26 PM
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David, start a petition begging these ostriches to set the word of God free, between blogs and Facebook etc. we should be able to swamp them with emails. But in case they are so steeped in tradition and fear that they still refuse, why not start an online translation project and produce an open source Portuguese Bible. Start from one of the poor quality e-texts of the old (so - I assume - out of copyright) version and adapt it keeping the text licenced under the appropriate Creative Commons licence...
Labels: bible, bible.society, digital
¶ 7:41 AM
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I have almost wondered if they have a don't ask don't tell policy on digital productions of their translations since there are a number of "bootleg" versions out there and I haven't seen any sort of legal action taken against them.
I don't think a petition is necessarily the right thing. First, I think I'd like to do some more networking and if necessary move toward an open letter.
Any idea why there are zilcho Bible Society people online or using social media?
By 
David Ker, at
September 25, 2009 4:11 PM
I assume "zilcho" is a trendy alternative for the more familiar "zilch" = zero... if so please do not overlook NZ's (Aussie) Bible Society CEO who is on Facebook, Twitter and Second Life where till recently he was a mover and shaker in the Anglican Cathedral (which I think made him a virtual bishop even before he was an real ordained priest ;) he's both a Bible Society honcho and a well naturalised digital immigrant.
Personally I'd prefer to see an Open Source update of an out of copyright translation, because I think that's long term the way to go, but it would need someone in a Lusophone setting to run with the project and ideally some institutional backing... But if youm know any good old boys, do network away, some good does come out of smoke-filled rooms ;)
If the Tradução Almeida Nova Revista or whatever the correct terminology would be could be produced as an open source doocument, licenced CC to protect the text but allow free reproduction and adaptations as long as a different name was used that could break the wqhole logjam open...
By Tim, at
September 25, 2009 5:23 PM
In Lusophonia I believe the de facto translation is the Revista e Actualizada 93. I can't see myself getting involved in some sort of update of an older version when a myriad of online versions of the RA93 exist and are being shared unofficially.
Out of respect for my mission I have to behave myself (I can hear you laughing...) so I need to be more diplomatic than usual (more laughter). :)
After work today (all that marking ;) I needed some "making something" therapy. Dough for flat bread to eat with the beans in the slow cooker is rising quietly in the kitchen, and there is the joyful sight of a new jar of preserved lemons sitting quietly waiting.Preserving lemons is real slow food. Alchemy at work as physical and chemical processes, that scientists may understand, but that most cooks seek simply to profit from, work at the lemons (and a few limes for extra zing). The process of sitting quietly in a dark place, marinating in salt and spices softening the nasty bitterness of the white pith extracting the unwanted tastes into the liquid, whilst, paradoxically at the same time transferring the intense zing of the zest to the whole. (I told you it is pure alchemy :)
In a few months time these citrus fruits will be ready for their turn in the slow cooker with chicken and olives...
If you have never preserved lemons, start tomorrow. Beg, borrow or buy some lemons (and ideally a few limes, 1 to 4 is fine). Cut them in quarters, press them down into a jar, witgh plenty of salt. Plenty might be a tablespoon depending on the size of your lemons. This is slow food, do not ask for exact recipes ;) In the jar you have probably put a cinnamon stick, some corriander seeds, a bay leaf or three, and if you must some chilli (other spices too are optional). Over the next few days (slow food remember) as the lemons sink gracefully into the brine, add more. When this process slows top up with oil, and seal the jar.
Wait a few months, hiding the jar in a dark corner so that you can be patient. In a few months, remember this is slow food ;) you can at last unite the lenons with the chicken and the olives in a dish that even lemonophobes and olive haters will enjoy and demand more of.
I'll give you the recipe soon, as even slow foodies are somewhat impatient, and waiting is half the savour ;)
[If, when you return in a few months, you find black mold on the surface it just means that the oil did not completely cover the mix, scoop it off and pretend it never happened.]
HT: This post was inspired by thre realisation that we only have 1.5 jars left from the Christmas stock, and by Rachel Barenblat the Velveteen Rabbi.
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You can do this with green mangoes (unripe) but with lots of chilli. Then chop them up and pan fry them with any salt water fish along with more chilli and sauce! Spicy Mango Fish!!
By 
, at
September 24, 2009 5:02 PM
Sounds yummy :) sadly it has been years since we had access to a surplus of mangoes. But the ones in the shops here are often not really ripe, so this could be good...
By Tim, at
September 24, 2009 5:14 PM
Not Only a Father was written and edited with print publication in mind, but increasingly I am frustrated with the model that puts more and more books before fewer and fewer readers, unless you are skillful at tickling the public fancy and create a blockbuster.
Most print books apparently only sell a couple of hundred copies. [I read this statistic on somebody's blog recently, but did not note the source :( so if it might be you, tell me in the comments and I'll add a link!] What's the point, except for a specialist work with a tiny target audience, most blog posts get more readers than that ;) So, put the material online for free and watch the readers roll in... except my "output" gets measured by a committee who value refereed or publisher approved publication... so seek a publisher and lose the audience, but gain brownie points in the academic system :(
Enter Digress.it, the successor to CommentPress (which was a fascinating project from the Institute for the Future of the Book). My bright idea is to publish Not Only a Father online free using Digress.it so that the ideass can be discussed paragraph by paragraph. This form of commenting will encourage (I hope) a deeper and more reflective conversation than the usual forum perhaps even because at paragraph level deeper than for blog posts followed by comments. I will argue to the committee that this is research into new forms of publication (a research area where I have established credibility through the Hypertext Bible Commentary project and associated journal articles). Thus I hope to have my cake and eat it also :)
BUT in this bid to score points, while also allowing maximum accessibility, I need your help. If you (or you know of someone who) are interested in reading about and/or discussing this issue of motherly language for God. Please visit, or point your friend to Not Only a Father I have uploaded two chapters already: Talking Pictures an introduction to using picture language to spesak of God, and Biblical Talk of the Motherly God. Several other chapters will be added over the next weeks, and one is still being researched.
Labels: biblical.studies.online, gender, god, mother, old testament
¶ 3:36 PM
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Julia's biker Jesus, all rippling body builder muscles. Flexing his forearms to snap the bars of the cross. With the slogan: "You drew first blood. But. I'll be back." Apart from the obvious problem, that such a Jesus saves no one except himself, what's wrong with this picture?It says no where in the Gospels that Jesus was weedy, granted neither does it say he went to the gym for hours every day, still carpentering probably meant that like my grandad he would have been muscly and even if wirey, strong. Not at all like the weedy androgynous Jesus of generations of popular Protestant iconography. You know the one with the wishy washy gentle smile and wavey blond or light chestnut hair down to his shoulders.
Actually, that's what's wrong with both pictures. They are pictures of Jesus. Not portraits of Jesus of Nazareth, but images of Jesus the son of God. Ikons in an iconoclast tradition. Orthodox Christianity, by and large, dismissed the Bible's iconoclastic streak, and happily developed a tradition of imaging God. Love them or hate them, Jesus images in the Orthodox tradition usally manage to avoid reducing Jesus to a kitch boy or girly boy next door. Protestant Christianity however reinvented iconoclasm. When this refusal to make plastic images of God breaks down, we have no tradition protecting us from this error. The result Jesus the girly-boy and Jesus the biker dude.
So... the deep question is, not so much: "What's wrong with this picture?" as in a culture that has become radically more visual, image-driven, can we retain the commandment: "You must not make for yourselves any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth..." or can we develop a stronger more theological iconographic aesthetic tradition that enables us to say firm NO to both Jesus the circus strong man and the gentle Jesus meek and mild (who features verbally in the Jesus is my boyfriend songs worship teams inflict on us, as well as visually in most Protestant religious graphics).
[I believe that Julia's image reproduces a painting by Boris Vallejo.]
Labels: culture
¶ 6:53 AM
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This makes scholars nervous of citing digital media. This is bad for scholarship, but good for nostalgia buffs who want to be scholars. They can go on advocating paper for preference.
Enter WebCite...
WebCite®, a member of the International Internet Preservation Consortium, is an on-demand archiving system for webreferences (cited webpages and websites, or other kinds of Internet-accessible digital objects), which can be used by authors, editors, and publishers of scholarly papers and books, to ensure that cited webmaterial will remain available to readers in the future. If cited webreferences in journal articles, books etc. are not archived, future readers may encounter a "404 File Not Found" error when clicking on a cited URL. Try it! Archive a URL here. It's free and takes only 30 seconds.This needs to be better known, so please pass it on... HT to Suzanne McCarthy
NB: in case you think I should have referenced the Biblioblog Top 50 above I've done it here (so please don't complain ;)
Labels: biblical.studies.online, culture, digital, internet
¶ 9:07 AM
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Dead links are definitely an issue, but the real problem is archiving. Whether it is through digital repositories, the Internet Archive, or something else, we need to think strategically about the shifting of data into long-term storage.
From that point, linking can be replaced by (quickly advancing) search and tagging technology. The title and author of a piece should be sufficient to find it in an archive even without a persistent link.
By Bryan, at
September 16, 2009 10:23 AM
Bryan, I agree, though this service does archive as well as supply an equivalent of a PURL. They also look to be backed reasonably solidly. For copyright enabled (public domain or Creative Commons for example) works the Internet Archive is also a great service. I put my audio there http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=tim%20bulkeley
When I remember ;)
By Tim, at
September 16, 2009 10:40 AM
Interesting post, Tim. Yes, the NT Gateway was once located at Birmingham; I've just checked and I moved it to NTGateway.com in 2000. I must explore the Webcite thing.
By Mark Goodacre, at
September 16, 2009 2:59 PM
I can no longer remember at what stage I finally removed the Amos material from the Auckland Uni site but since I had both sites running in parallel for a time I think it may have been later still, the Wayback Machine would suggest 2003 or so, though bible.gen.nz had been the primary for some time by then. Ah memories of the old days, eh!
By Tim, at
September 16, 2009 3:09 PM
The second is a summary of the ideas behind the vernacular resourcing through approximate oral translation (that I have presented before here - but cannot resist
Labels: audio, audio.bible, culture, digital, mission
¶ 5:55 PM
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Hi Tim,
That was an excellent introduction to the PodBible. I have posted about it to pass it on.
Labels: biblical.studies, biblical.studies.online, blogging
¶ 6:51 PM
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If you want to show it to a group, why not buy the DVD? It is from a series of homegroup resources on the sermon on the mount.
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First, ‘minimalists’ aren’t extremists. Second, they don’t view the bible as ‘information’. ‘Information’ carries with it the notion of facticity.Ah, tales of misunderstanding and exaggeration! Mea culpa. My statement, that Jim objects to, was an exaggeration, and was unfair to many on both "ends" of the imaginary and unreal (but nevertheless useful) spectrum. The extremists do not wish to discuss facts, I accept that ;)
However, from where I sit, the débat des sourds between fundies and minimalists often seems to descend into mere wrangling over questions of factuality. Some members of the debating teams involved are oblivious to this descent because they wish to embrace the ideologies expressed in biblical texts unquestioningly, and seem to believe that affirming the facticity of the text supports this view. Members and supporters of the other side, may regret this “slippage” because their “real” intention is to unmask the hidden agendas and ideologies of these same texts. But energy is expended on debate about history and ideology. Personally, I regret this frittering.
Labels: bible.reading, biblical.studies, minimalist
¶ 3:28 PM
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Modernity worships factuality. It reduces life to facts. Mystery and wonder are relegated to "entertainment". Moderns know "the price of everything and the value of nothing" (as Oscar Wilde2 said).
No wonder, then if the Bible is important it must be full of facts, or if it must be dethroned then it must be full of errors! This is the student's approach to the Bible, examine, test and discuss it's facticity. How different the reader! Julia quotes James Joyce3:
[in reading novels,] we walk through ourselves meeting robbers, ghosts, giants, old men, young men, wives, widows, brothers-in-love. But always meeting ourselves.Readers of the Bible "walk through themselves" and in doing so not only meet themselves, but also meet God. What we need is more readers and less students of the Bible. For all students meet is information. But there's the paradox, our profession produces Bible students
Dare we, dare I, adapt the way we teach so that we may be less good at developing biblical scholars, but better at producing Bible readers?
This post is an expansion of a comment I left on Julia's blog.
1. In "Le texte biblique et le contexte africain" Revue Zaïroise Théologie Protestante II, 1988, 11-17, I argued that "conservative and "liberal" approaches to the Bible "la trahissent au nom de l'histoire" [betray the Bible in the name of history].
2. Wilde, Oscar, and Joseph Bristow. The picture of Dorian Gray. Oxford University Press, 2006, 42. (Bristow notes that Wilde adapted this pithy saying in Lady Windemere's Fan two years later, so he was perhaps as fond of it as later generations have been ;)
3. James Joyce, Ulysses. The Modern Library Edition. New York: Random House, 1934, p. 210
Labels: bible, bible.reading, biblical.studies, literature
¶ 7:02 AM
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As I get ready to start a new semester of teaching Introduction to Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, I'm thinking about how the learning can help people be better readers rather than "students" in the way you describe. How can the focus shift from skills and competencies to helping folks learn things that aid in appreciation and recognition?
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 12:38 AM
I posted my reply to this post and some of the comments on Jim West's blog in a new post: Commenting on the Comments. http://juliamobrien.net
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 3:39 AM
Julia, I think skills and competencies are important, it is just that we focus on the wrong set. But (I think) worse than the "learning outcomes" are the "content" I include in class time and the assessments I use. Largely inherited from the past these elements of the course direct too much attention to history and/or ideology and too little to the literary working of the texts.
I have recently taught in two loci that in different ways put pressure on me to teach like that:
- in a denominational college (of a conservative Protestant family of churches) pressure from students interested in "defending" the Bible
- in a "secular" university pressure from colleagues to avoid anything that smacks too much of a religious approach
between the two reading oneself in reading the text seems to get left as casualty by the wayside.
By Tim, at
September 2, 2009 6:00 AM
Tim, I share your hunch that we spend too much time on "content" in the classroom. A lot of stuff I've been reading lately suggests that content is actually delivered better on-line than in person. What face-face interaction is best for is discussion and interaction. But, at the same time, I find that fewer and fewer students know the basic content of biblical stories and often aren't able to get that by their own reading of this often difficult text.
By Julia M. O'Brien, at
September 2, 2009 12:52 PM
Oh, yes, I agree, content is easy to deliver, on the web, in a textbook... that's why increasingly I relegate "content" to outside the classroom and test it's acquisition using simple online computer-marked quizzes. That way we can try to develop higher order skills and understanding in slass time :)
By Tim, at
September 6, 2009 7:03 AM
