This week, I am proud to celebrate the 237th birthday of our Army.

For 237 years, our Soldiers and their Families have been the strength of our great Nation in peace and at war. This week, across the Nation, we will be celebrating our Army and the remarkable men and women, past and present, who have embraced our Nation’s call to Service.

On June 14, 1775, our Nation’s leaders established the Continental Army.  This act brought the militias of the Thirteen Colonies together in their revolt against the oppressive rule of the British – thus beginning our Army’s rich heritage of meeting the needs of our Nation and defending her citizens.

The hodge-podge of farmers, shopkeepers, tradesmen and scholars of America’s Continental Army faced a formidable opponent. The odds were not in their favor, but our Soldiers made up for what they lacked with patriotism, astounding perseverance and dedication to the ideals of freedom.

Whether crossing the Delaware River in 1776 or the English Channel in 1944, our Army forbearers demonstrated through their actions that the American Soldier will bear any burden for the cause of freedom and their fellow citizens.

Today, America’s Army is engaged in nearly 150 countries around the world, on 6 of 7 continents, with over 94,000 Soldiers deployed today and 94,000 forward stationed.  Our Nation depends on its Army to defend the shores of our homeland, defeat enemy forces abroad, and help with recovery efforts in the wake of natural disasters so that the American people may enjoy the fruits of freedom and live in peace.

We have the best equipped, best trained and best led Army in history, and it is because of the 1.1 million professional Soldiers who serve in the Army, Army Reserve and Army National Guard, as well as the dedicated service of our Army Civilians.  Their hard work, commitment and professionalism have enabled our Army to stand firm when others might waver, to be a beacon of hope to those who desire freedom and to endure the agony of war because our Nation asked us to sacrifice.

It is our Army’s professional competence, moral character, and resolute commitment that truly defines us as professionals and guarantees our sacred trust with the American people.  It is a solemn responsibility that we must always strive to maintain.

Once a young man or woman joins the Army and takes the oath to support and defend the Constitution, they enter into a sacred trust with their Nation.  And whether they serve one enlistment or retire from the Army they will always remain a Soldier.  Army Strong!

via Happy 237th Birthday, Army!.

The three monotheist religious traditions, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, have more in common than in contention. All three believe God is one, unique, concerned with humanity’s condition. Each takes up the narrative of the others’ — Christianity and Islam carrying forward the story begun in the Hebrew scriptures of ancient Israel that define Judaism.

Christianity affirms the vocation of Israel after the flesh, and Islam affirms the validity of the antecedent monotheist revelations, regarding Muhammad as the seal of prophecy and the Quran as a work of God.

Falling into the genus of religion and forming a single sub-species of theistic religions, the three monotheisms among all theistic religions bear a unique relationship to one another. That is because they concur not only in general, but in particular ways. Specifically, they tell stories of the same type, and some of the stories that they tell turn out to go over much the same ground.

Judaism, with its focus upon the Hebrew scriptures of ancient Israel, tells the story of the one God, who created man in his image, and of what happened then within the framework of Israel, the holy people. Christianity takes up that story but gives it a different reading and ending by instantiating the relations between God and his people in the life of a single human being. For its part, in sequence, Islam recapitulates some basic components of the same story, affirming the revelations of Judaism and then Christianity, but drawing the story onward to yet another climax.

We cannot point to any three other religions that form so intimate a narrative relationship as do the successive revelations of monotheism. No other set of triplets tells a single, continuous story for themselves as do Islam in relationship to Christianity, and Christianity in relationship to Judaism. What demands close reading is this: Within the logic of monotheism, how do Islam, Christianity and Judaism represent diverse choices among a common set of possibilities?

The three religions of one God concur and contend. The basic categories are congruent, the articulation of those categories is not. By showing the range and potential of a common conviction — that God is one and unique, makes demands upon man’s social order and the conduct of every day life, distinguishes those who do his will from the rest of humanity and will stand in judgment upon all mankind at the end of days — the three religions address a common program. 

But differing in detail, each affords perspective upon the character of the others. Each sheds light on the choices the others have made from what defines a common agenda, a single menu: the category-formations that they share.

What are the theological issues subject to debate? 

• Does the interior logic of monotheism require God to be represented as incorporeal and wholly abstract, or can the one, unique God be represented by appeal to analogies supplied by man? 

In line with Genesis 1:26, which speaks of God’s making man “in our image, after our likeness,” and the commandment (Ex. 20:4), “You shall not make yourself a graven image or any likeness of anything” in nature, what conclusions are to be drawn? 

At one end of the continuum, Islam insists that God cannot be represented in any way, shape or form, not even by man as created in his image, after his likeness. At the other end, Christianity finds that God is both embodied and eternally accessible in the fully divine Son, Jesus Christ. In the middle Judaism represents God in some ways as consubstantial with man, in other ways as wholly other.

• God makes himself known to particular persons, who, in the nature of things, form communities among themselves. God addresses a “you” that is not only singular, a Moses or a Jesus or a Muhammad, but plural — all who will believe, act and obey. Islam, Christianity and Judaism concur that the faithful form a distinct group, defined by those who accept God’s rule and regulation. But among all humanity, how does that group tell its story, and with what consequence for the definition of the type of group that is constituted? 

Judaism tells the story of the faithful as an extended family, all of them children of the same ancestors, Abraham and Sarah. It invokes the metaphor of a family, with the result that the faithful adopt for themselves the narrative of a supernatural genealogy, one that finds within the family all who identify themselves as part of it by making its story their genealogy too. 

Islam dispenses entirely with the analogy of a family, defining God’s people, instead, through the image of a community of the faithful worshipers of God, seeing Muslims as supporters of one another and caretakers of the least fortunate or weakest members of the community.

Where Judaism speaks of a family among the families of humankind or of “Israel” as a nation unlike all others, sui generis, Islam takes the diametrically opposed view. Its “people of God” are ultimately extensible to encompass all humankind within the community of true worshipers of God. 

Here Christianity takes a middle position. Like Judaism, it views the faithful as a people, but like Islam, it obliterates all prior genealogical distinctions, whether of ethnicity, gender or politics. So Christians form “a people of the peoples,” “a people that is no people,” using the familiar metaphor of Israel. At the same time, they underscore, like Islam, a conception of themselves as comprised by mankind without lines of differentiation. 

• God has set forth what he wants from his people, which is the love and devotion of his creatures. This comes to realization in a program of actions to be carried out and to be avoided. These concern acts of prayer, study, contemplation and reflection on divine revelation (in the case of Judaism, study of Torah; in the case of Christianity, the realization and enactment of the image of Christ within the individual believer and the community; in the case of Islam, particular prescribed ritual acts of piety and worship: testimony of faith, ritual prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage as well as recitation of God’s word, calling upon him in personal prayer and obedience to His will). 

All three also require deeds of philanthropy in charity and acts of loving kindness, above and beyond the requirements of the law. Judaism and Islam share certain food laws (e.g., not to eat carrion but to eat only meat from animals that have been properly slaughtered), and Christianity in its formative age forbade the faithful to eat meat that had been offered to idolatry. Where Islam requires a pilgrimage to Mecca, the observance of the festivals of Judaism encompassed a pilgrimage to the Temple in Jerusalem when it still stood and Christianity portrayed all the faithful as pilgrims to the new, heavenly Jerusalem that God was preparing for his people. 

In these and comparable ways, the three religions aim at defining acts that realize God’s will and that sanctify God’s people.

How is God’s people to relate to everybody else? What are the consequences of the conviction that the one and only God has made himself known to humanity at large through one community or person or family? Specifically, what is the task of the believer vis-à-vis the unbeliever?

At one end of the continuum, Judaism asks the faithful to avoid participating in, or in any way affirming, the activities of the idolaters in their idolatry. Amiable relationships on ordinary occasions give way to strict isolation from idolatry and all things used in that connection. At the other end of the continuum, Islam, for reasons equally systemic, takes the most active role, undertaking to obliterate idolatry by wiping out its worshipers. 

Judaism in its classical statement defined its task as passive avoidance, joined with a willingness to accept the sincere convert. Islam called for active the extermination of idolatry, joined with an insistence that, to live, the idolater must renounce his error and acknowledge the one true God and his own. 

Yet, early Islam took a very different position vis-à-vis Jews and Christians and a few other “people of Scripture.” These were to be largely tolerated so long as they did not threaten Muslims or the practice of Islam. 

Christianity found its position in the middle. On one hand, like Judaism and Islam, Christianity forbade the faithful to utilize anything that could serve idolatry and to refrain, even at the cost of death (“martyrdom”), from all gestures of complicity with idolatry. On the other hand, like Judaism and unlike Islam, Christianity in its formative age contemplated not a holy war of extermination but an on-going campaign of evangelism, to win over idolaters. True, in due course, Christianity would slide over to the Islamic side of this continuum, but that happened many centuries beyond the classical age. 

In its formative centuries, Christianity’s logic dictated a policy toward unbelievers that placed the religion in the middle, between Judaic passivity and Islamic activity. 

What of the end of days? Here is where the interior logic (as well as the articulation) of the three monotheisms both converges and diverges. As told in common, the story finds the resolution of the dialectic of how the one omnipotent and just God can account for a world of manifest injustice. 

All three religions concur that God will bring the end of days, when all mankind will be raised from the dead and judged, and those found worthy will enter Paradise. At issue is, what do the faithful have to do to advance the end-time? 

Predictably, Judaism, at its end of the continuum, asks the faithful to carry out God’s will as stated from the beginning, sanctifying the Sabbath of creation one time in accord with the Torah. So Judaism looks inward, within Israel, for the salvation of humanity through Israel’s own act of sanctification. Then who is saved at the end, if not all those who acknowledge the one true God? And that will encompass, the prophets say, all of humanity. 

At the other end of the continuum, Islam holds that no human effort can advance or retard the Last Day. God alone will recall His creation to Himself in His own good time. All human beings can do is prepare themselves for the Day of Resurrection by living daily lives of piety and probity. At the Resurrection all who have died before will be called forth with all who are living to face the accounting of their earthly lives and inherit accordingly either Paradise or the Fire as their eternal abode. 

And Christianity takes a middle position, insisting that the world as we know it, down to the very bodies we inhabit, is to be changed definitively. But in that transformation, a metamorphosis from flesh to spirit and death to life, the identities that we have crafted during the course of our lives are to endure. All people, with or without an explicit knowledge of the Son of God, have known his image in their human experience: So from the point of view of the eschaton they have fashioned or have refused to fashion an existence which is commensurate with eternity.

These topics show us similarity and difference: a series of single continua, different positions within each continuum. 

The interior logic of monotheism raises for the three religions a common set of questions. But then each religion tells the story in its way, and the respective narratives — in character, components and coherence — shape the distinctive responses spelled out here. 

That is how the three religions of one God converge and diverge: They converge in their basic structures, which are more symmetrical than asymmetrical, and they diverge in the way their systems work out the implications of monotheism as monotheism is embodied in the continuing narratives, those of Judaism, then Christianity, finally Islam.

via Jacob Neusner: Three Religions, One God.

His name is Bill. He has wild hair, wears a T-shirt with holes in it, jeans and no shoes. This was literally is wardrobe for his entire four years of college. He is brilliant. Kind of esoteric and very, very bright. He became a Christian recently while attending college.

Across the street from the campus is a well-dressed, very conservative church. One day Bill decides to go there. He walks in with no shoes, jeans, his T-shirt, and wild hair. The service has already started and So Bill starts down the aisle looking for a seat.

The church is completely packed and he can’t find a seat. By now people are really looking a bit uncomfortable, but no one says anything. Bill gets closer and closer and closer to the pulpit and, when he realizes there are no seats, he just squats down right on the carpet. (Although perfectly acceptable behavior at a college fellowship, trust me, this had never happened in this church before!

By now the people are really uptight, and the tension in the air is thick. About this time, the minister realizes that from way at the back of the church, an Elder is slowly making his way toward Bill. Now the Elder is in his eighties, has silver-gray hair, and a three-piece suit. A godly man, very elegant, very dignified, very courtly. He walks with a cane and, as he starts walking toward this boy, everyone is saying To themselves that you can’t blame him for what he’s going to do.

How can you expect a man of his age and of his background to understand some college kid on the floor? It takes a long time for the man to reach the boy. The church is utterly silent except for the clicking of the man’s cane.

All eyes are focused on him. You can’t even hear anyone breathing. The minister can’t even preach the sermon until the Elder does what he has to do. And now they see this elderly man drop his cane on the floor. With great difficulty he lowers himself and sits down next to Bill and worships with him so he won’t be alone.

Everyone chokes up with emotion. When the minister gains control, he says, “What I’m about to preach, you will never remember. What you have just seen, you will never forget. Be careful how you live. You may be the only Bible some people will ever read.”

via huithiang!: AN UNSPOKEN BIBLE.

In 2011 we observe the 400th anniversary of the King James Bible. The story of how and why King James authorized this version as head of the English Church is beautifully told by Adam Nicolson in God’s Secretaries (2003#. The work began in 1604 when a small group of Puritans approached the king and pleaded for a common Bible that would unify England after a century of religious conflict that was punctuated by torture, beheadings, and the burning of dissidents. Because James, son of the Catholic Queen Mary, had been raised in Scotland by a household governor who was Presbyterian, these particular Calvinists hoped that the Geneva Bible would become the preferred translation. However, the Geneva Bible in English, which was the first “study Bible,” contained numerous marginal notes and translation decisions that diminished the power of the bishops and the king. So the Anglican bishops outmaneuvered the Puritans and persuaded the King to back a revision of the Bishop’s Bible, which was based mostly on the work of William Tyndale, who had been burned alive for translating the Bible into English. The revision work took seven years, completed in 1611, and was complicated by the continued religious oppression of Puritans. The Puritans began fleeing execution #including inquisitions led by the head of the King James translation committee) and boarded ships for a new world.

For two centuries in America the Geneva Bible competed with the King James Bible as the preferred Bible translation for Christian people. By the mid 1800s the Methodists and Baptists were spreading west across the land on horseback with the King James Bible, and they were planting thousands of churches that emerged out of massive revivals. They taught people how to read, by using the King James Bible as a core textbook. By the twentieth century, they were building universities and hospitals, as well as starting thousands of Sunday schools.

Even as the language of the King James Version (KJV) was thoroughly embedded in the American Protestant culture by the twentieth century, many words no longer held the same meaning that they did in the 1500s, when Tyndale coined hundreds of the terms. So the KJV underwent modest revisions to update some of the archaic language. However, a revision process with the Bible apparently preserves more than 95 percent of the prior edition. As a result a “woodenness” in the language is more apparent over time. It gets harder to read and takes more explanation to understand. It requires a college degree to feel comfortable with the complex sentences. It does not sound natural. The root cause of awkwardness is the use of English idioms and images that typical people do not actually use in everyday communication. This happens when the translator tries to produce a word order in English that is driven by the word order in Hebrew or Greek. Therefore, instead of reading English in Sunday morning worship, or in the Sunday school, we are reading “Biblish,” which sounds like a foreign language. It’s no surprise that most minds wander.

To get a truly fresh and accurate rendering in the common English of our era, the best available biblical scholars and writers started fresh with the ancient languages. We questioned words and images and idioms that no longer mean what the Hebrew and Greek meant.  Here are examples of change that readers will see in the summer of 2011 when the Common English Bible is fully published:

• Instead of nobles (a term based in English feudalism), we often translate officials.
• Instead of referring to a noble person, we often refer to an honorable person.
• Instead of atonement (a word that Tyndale made up, at-one-ment) we prefer forms of reconcile or reconciliation.
• Instead of “ark of the covenant” we prefer “chest containing the covenant.”
• Instead of “vessels of the temple,” we prefer “temple equipment.”
• Instead of beginning thousands of sentences with the connective particle “For,” we prefer to let modern English syntax convey these  connections.
• Instead of “repent” we prefer “change your heart and life.”
• Instead of using a vocative “O” thousands of times before Lord (O Lord) or God, we removed O, because it’s not present in Hebrew or Greek, and we do not speak with it in natural discourse or sing with it in our contemporary musical expression. Check out the Psalms, which read beautifully without the “O” when Lord or God are well placed in the poetic syntax.
• We use contractions because that’s how we talk to each other.

Some Bible readers find change jarring. They think that archaic language is dignified language or that Biblish has gravitas that ordinary people must accept for an hour on Sunday. Yet when we come to the words of the Bible through fresh eyes, the stories and expectations come alive as if for the first time. Our passion is restored for reading and understanding God’s instruction or teaching. The Word then draws more people to know and love God. You and I are sent out:

“to do justice,
embrace faithful love,
and walk carefully with your God.” (Micah 6:8 CEB)

~~Paul Franklyn
Associate Publisher

via Common English Bible – Blog.

The three things that will likely trip you up more than anything online will likely be your tongue, your temper, and intolerance for other people’s views, tastes, principles, beliefs, and behaviors. Here are 30 biblical truths to help you stay focused and call on heaven in a minute. Keep them handy. Don’t just read them, mediate on them, pray about them and ask God to make them personal and real to your specific situation.

Tongue: What you say will echo throughout eternity, so getting control over your tongue (words) online (and elsewhere) is critical.

1. And my tongue shall talk of your righteousness and of your praise all the day long. ~ Psalms 35:28
2. The mouth of the righteous talk of wisdom, And his tongue speaketh justice.
~ Psalms 37:30
3. My tongue also shall talk of thy righteousness all the daylong. ~ Psalms 71:24.
4. The tongue of the wise utters knowledge aright; but the mouths of fools pour out folly. ~ Proverbs 15:2
5. A gentle tongue is a tree of life; but perverseness therein is a breaking of the spirit. ~ Proverbs 15:4
6. Whoso keeps his mouth and his tongue keeps his soul from troubles. ~ Proverbs 21:23
7. By long forbearing is a ruler persuaded, And a soft tongue breaks the bone.
~ Proverbs 25:15
8. The north wind brings forth rain: So doth backbiting tongue an angry countenance. ~ Proverbs 25:23
9. Keep your tongue from evil, and your lips from speaking guile. ~ Psalms 34:13
10. Death and life are in the power of the tongue; and they that love it shall eat the fruit thereof. ~ Proverbs 18:21

Temper: If unchecked, your temper will cause you to sin, spark division, and destroy opportunities to love and minister to others.

1. He who is slow to anger has great understanding, but he who is quick-tempered exalts folly. ~Proverbs 14:29
2. He who is slow to anger is better than the mighty, and he who rules his spirit, than he who captures a city. ~Proverbs 16:32
3. This you know, my beloved brethren. But let everyone be quick to hear, slow to speak and slow to anger; ~James 1:19
4. A fool always loses his temper, but a wise man holds it back. ~Proverbs 29:11
5. A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger. ~Proverbs 15:1
6. A hot-tempered man stirs up strife, but the slow to anger pacifies contention. ~Proverbs 15:18
7. Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on your anger, and give no opportunity to the devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor, doing honest work with his own hands, so that he may have something to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupting talk come out of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear…~ Ephesians 4:26-32
8. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, and self control. ~Galatians 5:22
9. Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. ~Romans 12:21
10. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” ~John 12:35

Tolerance: Since the Internet is buzzing with 1.6 million people a day, chances are your level of tolerance will be challenged around every corner. Extend acceptance to those who hold different beliefs than you. Tolerance does not mean you’ve compromised, it simply means you are gracious.

1. . . bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you. ~Colossians 3:13
2. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” ~John 8:7
3. And he said to them, “You yourselves know how unlawful it is for a Jew to associate with or to visit anyone of another nation, but God has shown me that I should not call any person common or unclean.” ~Acts 10:28
4. Finally, all of you, have unity of mind, sympathy, brotherly love, a tender heart, and a humble mind. Do not repay evil for evil or reviling for reviling, but on the contrary, bless, for to this you were called, that you may obtain a blessing. For “Whoever desires to love life and see good days, let him keep his tongue from evil and his lips from speaking deceit; let him turn away from evil and do good; let him seek peace and pursue it. ~1 Peter 3:8-11
5. A Song of Ascents. Of David. Behold, how good and pleasant it is when brothers dwell in unity!” ~Psalm 133:1
6. With all humility and gentleness, with patience, bearing with one another in love, ~Ephesians 4:2
7. But in your hearts honor Christ the Lord as holy, always being prepared to make a defense to anyone who asks you for a reason for the hope that is in you; yet do it with gentleness and respect, ~1 Peter 3:15
8. I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. ~Revelation 2:2
9. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” ~John 8:7
10. But when you give a feast, invite the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed, because they cannot repay you. You will be repaid at the resurrection of the just. ~ Luke 14:13-14

What area do you need to work on as you connect with others throughout the day?

via http://stickyjesus.com/2011/01/30-truths-to-tame-your-tongue-temper-tolerance/.

From Andy Crouch’s insightful piece about Steve Jobs:

As remarkable as Steve Jobs is in countless ways—as a designer, an innovator, a (ruthless and demanding) leader—his most singular quality has been his ability to articulate a perfectly secular form of hope. Nothing exemplifies that ability more than Apple’s early logo, which slapped a rainbow on the very archetype of human fallenness and failure—the bitten fruit—and made it a sign of promise and progress……

teve Jobs was the evangelist of this particular kind of progress—and he was the perfect evangelist because he had no competing source of hope. In his celebrated Stanford commencement address (which is itself an elegant, excellent model of the genre), he spoke frankly about his initial cancer diagnosis in 2003. It’s worth pondering what Jobs did, and didn’t say:

No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because death is very likely the single best invention of life. It’s life’s change agent; it clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now, the new is you. But someday, not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it’s quite true. Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice, heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become.This is the gospel of a secular age. It has the great virtue of being based only on what we can all perceive—it requires neither revelation nor dogma. And it promises nothing it cannot deliver—since all that is promised is the opportunity to live your own unique life, a hope that is manifestly realizable since it is offered by one who has so spectacularly succeeded by following his own “inner voice, heart and intuition.”….

But the genius of Steve Jobs has been to persuade us, at least for a little while, that cold comfort is enough. The world—at least the part of the world in our laptop bags and our pockets, the devices that display our unique lives to others and reflect them to ourselves—will get better. This is the sense in which the tired old cliché of “the Apple faithful” and the “cult of the Mac” is true. It is a religion of hope in a hopeless world, hope that your ordinary and mortal life can be elegant and meaningful, even if it will soon be dated, dusty, and discarded%2

via The Gospel of Steve Jobs | Jesus Creed.

From CBE by John Kohlenberger. John R. Kohlenberger III (ThB, Multnomah Bible College; MA, Western Seminary) is the author or co-editor of more than four dozen biblical reference books and study Bibles, including the awarding-winning NIV Exhaustive Concordance and The NIV Bible Commentary.

What do you think of the NIV 2011? the TNIV?

The new year 2011 will see some major landmarks in English Bible translation. This is the 400th anniversary of the publication of the Authorized or King James Version, the most widely-used English Bible translation in history. Also due to be released this year is a revision of the New American Bible, the most popular modern Catholic translation. But perhaps most anticipated is the new edition of the New International Version (NIV), the bestselling English Bible of the last thirty years.

Many are familiar with controversy surrounding the release of the Today’s New International Version (TNIV) in 2002 and 2005. The TNIV was intended by the Committee on Bible Translation ([CBT] the group of scholars who maintain and revise the NIV) to be a revision of the NIV. However, the inaccurate and often inflammatory criticism of the use of inclusive language in the TNIV moved the International Bible Society ([IBS] the translation sponsor and publisher of the NIV) to release the TNIV as a separate translation and maintain the 1984 edition of the NIV as it was.

On September 1, 2009, a press conference held by CBT, Biblica (the new name for IBS), and Zondervan announced that the 1984 NIV would be revised and the 2005 TNIV discontinued. Some interpreted this to mean the TNIV was a failed experiment and the old NIV would just be freshened a bit. What was actually stated was that the CBT would reconsider every change that the TNIV introduced to the NIV, in light of external feedback, so that the 2011 revision of the NIV would actually be a revised TNIV.As part of their process, to ensure that they were accurately reflecting common English usage, the CBT initiated a relationship with Collins Dictionaries to use the Collins Bank of English, one of the world’s foremost English language research tools, to conduct a major new study of changes in gender language. The Bank of English is a database of more than 4.4 billion words drawn from text publications and spoken word recordings from all over the world. As a result, many of the gender language changes introduced in the TNIV were verified and retained, some texts revert back to the 1984 NIV, and others are handled in a completely different way. Most notable patterns are:

Singular subjects can be resumed by plurals to avoid the use of “he” or “him”: Psalm 1:1 “Blessed is the one”; 1:3 “That person is like . . . whatever they do prospers.”

“Mankind” is used far more frequently in English than “humankind,” so “humankind” is not in the NIV 2011: Genesis 1:27: “So God created mankind in his own image, / in the image of God he created them; / male and female he created them.”

The phrase “God and man” as a pair is still the majority English use: Luke 2:52 “And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.” However, human beings collectively are usually referred to as “people” or “human beings,” not as ‘man” or ‘men.”

As in the TNIV, Junia is still female and an apostle (Rom. 16:7) and Phoebe is still a deacon (Rom. 16:1-2).

In New Testament books, at the first occurrence of “brothers and sisters” (usually just ‘brothers” in older English translations), there is a significant new note: ‘The Greek word for brothers and sisters (adelphoi) refers here to believers, both men and women, as part of God’s family.”

Interestingly, the signature NIV/TNIV rendering “sinful nature” for Greek sarx is now the traditional “flesh” in all but two verses. This is a major change from the entire history of the NIV and I think will be welcomed by holiness denominations and others.

Although the print edition of the NIV will not be released until later this spring, the entire translation is available online at http://www.BibleGateway.com. There is also significant information at http://www.Biblica.com. Both sites have the extremely helpful document, “Updating the New International Version of the Bible: Notes from the Committee on Bible Translation.” This has much more information and many more examples that I can include in this column.

If you want a wealth of information, visit http://www.slowley.com/niv2011_comparison/. This site has a comparison of the full texts of the 1984 NIV, 2005 TNIV and 2010 NIV organized book-by-book and verse-by-verse.

I believe the 2011 NIV is a major improvement to the 1978/1984 NIV that incorporates the majority of the scholarly and gender language changes of the TNIV. I pray that it will be embraced by readers of the English Bible, egalitarian and hierarchicalists alike.

via TNIV to NIV 2011 (John Kohlenberger) | Jesus Creed.

Note: I encountered the following posting earlier today and it makes a lot of sense.  For those of you in churches, these will make sense.  If you want to read more, visit Dave Rudd’s blog (link at the bottom).

Each of these “truths” about Michigan’s football program is somewhat true in many churches. I’ll leave it to you to connect the dots.

1. They want to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems.

- Hiring a “Michigan Man” seems to be the number one priority of most Michigan fans. No one seems to care about hiring the “Right Man.”

2. They think it’s important to make sure the “important” people get what they want.

- It seems to me that everything about UofM coaching decisions, from firing Rich Rod to hiring whomever, has been driven first and foremost by making the right people happy.

3. They aren’t willing to pay the steep price for healthy change.

- Rich Rod probably would have turned the program around had he been given more time and not been resisted from day one. And his forward approach probably would have set them up for the future better than anyone would have anticipated. But even though he turned in progressively better seasons each year, no one was willing to pay the price.

4. They’re stuck in the past.

- Bo Schembechler’s style of football wouldn’t work today. Tressel would own him also if he didn’t change. Anybody know why Joe Paterno continues to be so successful? BECAUSE HE CHANGED!

5. The program is being destroyed by “factions”.

- Too many different groups have too many different ideas about the direction of the program. No one is willing to be flexible, and no one is willing to give anyone else freedom to set a direction. No one is willing to submit their own will to the wisdom of another person.

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