BIBLE NEWS: Biblical Art Museum Closing

The Bible has been inspiring artists of all kinds since the beginning of its history, and it continues to serve as a muse today.  But that doesn't mean that Biblical art can find donors to keep museums open.  The Museum of Biblical Art in Manhattan is closing due to lack of funds to support the necessary space to showcase masterpieces.

If you think religious imagery has no place in modern art, consider Barnett Newman’s paintings Adam and Eve. Newman translates the Bible’s first man and woman into red vertical columns in fields of purple-brown: the nude portrayals of these inhabitants of Eden by earlier artists such as Albrecht Dürer become lines of stark abstraction. This is not the only echo of Genesis in Newman’s art. His entire aesthetic of sublime power suggests God giving the 10 commandments to Moses or dividing the waters from the earth. Newman’s Broken Obelisk might be an image of the destruction of the temple or the fall of Babylon. In his cycle of shockingly austere paintings The Stations of the Cross, he turns to the New Testament story of the Passion.

BIBLE NEWS: School System Backs Down on Bible Ban

You may have heard last week that a school district in Broward County, FL had forbidden a student from reading his Bible during a free reading time.  Well, after much back and forth, the school district has backed down and reaffirmed a policy that students may read their Bible during reading times.

...on Tuesday, Liberty Institute received a letter from the School Board saying, in part, that the state does not ban the Bible in public schools and that teachers and staff across Broward would be notified of this.

BIBLE NEWS: The Bible in the Opo language

Jesus said to take the gospel to all nations, and one way that this is being done is by translating the Bible into every language in the world.  Recently, the Anglican church passed a milestone by translating the gospel of Mark into "Opo", a people group from Gambella in South Sudan

The Opo desperately want the Bible in their own language. There is a team of three working on this project: the Rev. David Onuk is the only priest of the Opo, and recently attended a one month course on Bible translation in Addis Ababa. Rev. Isaac Pur Wal is a Nuer priest who helped with understanding the base text as they were translating from Nuer and inputting the translation into the computer. James Bol is an Opo who works for the Gambella government doing translation of documents into Opo.

BIBLE NEWS: Firemen sworn in on iPad Bible

We study the Bible for its content, but it is also used as a ceremonial object.  For instance, it is commonly used in swearing-in ceremonies.  And as the Bible goes online, we're seeing electronic bibles used in new and different ways.  Did you think you'd see the day when someone was sworn in on an iPad?

According to a local NBC news channel, when the firemen showed up for the swearing in ceremony, they discovered that no one brought along a physical copy of the Bible. A quick-thinking member of the group took out an iPad and downloaded the app.

BIBLE NEWS: Israeli scholar looks to correct Hebrew Bible's grammar

As Bible Quizzers, we have great respect for the Word of God.  But to some scholars, it is not only the words that matter, but literally every "jot and tittle" (i.e. every minor marking, like the dot of an i, or the placement of a comma) that is worthy of scrutiny.  Israeli Judaic scholar Menachem Cohen has spent the last 30 years trying to "correct" every grammatical detail of the Hebrew Bible used today.

His edits, focusing primarily on grammatical blemishes and an intricate set of biblical symbols, mark the first major overhaul of the Hebrew Bible in nearly 500 years.
Poring over thousands of medieval manuscripts, the 84-year-old Cohen identified 1,500 inaccuracies in the Hebrew language texts that have been corrected in his completed 21-volume set. The final chapter is set to be published next year.

He notes that none of his changes affect the meaning of the text in any way.  But it does it's best to bring our received version of the Hebrew books of the Bible back as close to the original writings as possible.

BIBLE NEWS: A Bible-Based Tablet?

It comes as no surprise to anyone who knows me, but I am an avid user of the Apple iPad. It is not only used for surfing the web and checking e-mail, but also for studying the Bible, taking notes during sermons, and reading Biblical references. So, I viewed with interest the news that a new group is looking to bring about a "Biblical tablet computer" filled with books about the Bible, Christian radio stations, and a "safe" web browser.

The Edifi tablet is a full-colour touchscreen, much like Apple's iPad - but it's pre-loaded with Bible passages, Christian radio stations and free religious e-Books.

The seven-inch Android tablet is $149, and will launch soon in America - and even non-believers might be tempted by its low price.

BIBLE NEWS: Bible Museum coming to Washington D.C.

The Bible is written by people who were eye-witnesses to the acts of God and His people. Clearly, there is value in seeing for yourself what God has done for you, over the course of history. In this spirit, a new group is looking to build a Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C., so that visitors can see Biblical-artifacts from over the years and see recreations of major events in Bible history.

Summers said the traveling exhibit recreates at 80 percent scale the chamber of London’s Westminster Abbey where the King James Version of the Bible was written. A full-scale recreation is planned for the museum. 

Steve Green, president of the Hobby Lobby arts and crafts chain and a Southern Baptist, said the museum will feature the history, contents and influence of the Bible but will leave it up to visitors to decide whether to believe the holy book. 

“When we present the evidence, I think it’s going to be compelling for somebody to say, ‘Wow, this is a compelling book. I might want to consider what it has to say,’” he said.

BIBLE NEWS: Evidence for the Queen of Sheba

There is a saying amongst apologists, "If you see a conflict between archeology and the Bible, wait a few years.  Archeology will eventually catch up."  There's more evidence for this turning up in Ethiopia of all places where modern genomic research is turning up evidence for the existence of the Queen of Sheba, a character that historians and archeologists have questioned for centuries.

The team detected mixing between some Ethiopians and non-African populations dating to approximately 3,000 years ago. The origin and date of this genomic admixture, along with previous linguistic studies, is consistent with the legend of the Queen of Sheba, who according to the Ethiopian Kebra Nagast book had a child with King Solomon from Israel and is mentioned in both the Bible and the Qur’an.

BIBLE NEWS: Cycling the Holy Land

For much of the last century, Israel has been a dangerous place. But recent security gains have revitalized the Holy Land as a destination for tourism and education. Now, Israel has established a series of cycling trails for people who want to tour the land of Jesus on two wheels.

n a loose way, the trail follows the route Jesus might have walked from Nazareth, where he grew up, to Capernaum on the shores of the Sea of Galilee, where he established his ministry. Along the way, you can visit a kibbutz – its perimeter marked by barbed wire and its gate manned by a machine-gun toting guard – and even stay in a hotel there. At only 60km in length, the trail can be cycled in a day or two, so the avid biker will quickly be looking for other perspiration-inducing options. Of these, there are many, ranging from off-road mountain-bike trails in the Ella Valley near Jerusalem to road circuits in various parts of the country.

BIBLE NEWS: "The Story" Wins an Audie

The Bible is old, but there are always new ways to present it. Zondervan's "The Story" has been awarded a prestigious "Audie Award" for its new audiobook adaptation.

Zondervan's bestselling The Story, NIV: The Bible as One Continuing Story of God and His People was honored with a 2012 Audie Award at a ceremony in New York last night. The Audie Awards, hosted by the Audio Publishers Association, are the most prestigious honor in the audio book industry, recognizing the audio books that made the greatest impact over the past year...Recorded in 31 chapters, The Story is a concise, abridged chronology of the Bible that takes the listener through an unfolding progression of vital Bible characters and events from Genesis to Revelation.

BIBLE NEWS: The Bible Comes to Inuktitut

After 34 years of work, the Bible has been translated into Inuktitut, a language of many Eskimo tribes. This project highlighted some of the unique challenges that translators face in lands very different from those where the Bible was written.

Plant and animal names were among the biggest difficulties and often the word "tree" was used for them. In some cases, English words such as "camel" were used. One surprising difficulty was the complete absence of a term for "peace" in Inuktitut. That forced the translators to use complete sentences to get the idea across to readers, according to Haaretz.

BIBLE NEWS: "Bible School in a Box"

Often when we think about "missions trips", we think about ministering to people in other countries or other continents. But our own land contains many people who have never heard the gospel, including those living on American Indian Reservations. One church has created a "Bible School in a Box" to bring the message of Jesus to the Lakota people.

Amy said, “We would go out into these places in the middle of nowhere, and as soon as we got out of the truck, children would come literally flying out of the houses.”

The outlying areas — Red Scaffold, Iron Lightning, Thunder Butte — rarely receive missionary visits because they are so far from Eagle Butte, the main area. This, however, is where the greatest need lies, Dye said. These towns lie in the two poorest counties in the United States, Dewey and Ziebach counties, where alcoholism is at 75 percent, unemployment at 80 percent, and Dye said, “Hopelessness is 100 percent.”...

The Higdons visited at Christmas time in 2008 and 2009, and while still on the reservation, Maggie Higdon suggested returning in the summer for a Bible school. The youth brainstormed, and came up with the idea of Bible School in a Box. A team returned in the summer of 2010 and 2011 and are planning a return trip in July this year.

BIBLE NEWS: Translation is NOT easy

A few days back we mentioned that the Bible was not written in English - it's original writings were in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. Thanks to scholars, we have a plethora of English translations which do their best to convey the original writings accurately. But what about people who speak less-popular languages? They often only have one translation provided by Missionaries like Wycliffe Bibe Translators. These languages may not have scholars who understand the ancient languages, and may not even have a starting point for discussion of things like "sheep" and "goats" depending on what part of the world they're in. So what is a Bible translator to do? Some recent controversies have highlighted the difficulty that Bible Translators have walking the line between making the Bible understandable to a foreign culture and language, and maintaining the theology taught by Christ.

Creson said that in some cases, what are known to scholars as the "divine familial terms" -- God the Father and the Son of God -- don't make sense in translation in some cultures. Islamic teaching, for example, rejects the notion that God could be involved in a relationship similar to a human family, and Creson argues that people in such cultures might be immediately put off by those terms.
"Translation is a very laborious process, because you have to understand the culture of the community, and you don't understand that overnight," he said.
But using words like "Messiah" instead of "Son" and "Lord" instead of "Father" badly distorts the essential Christian doctrine of the Trinity, in which God is said to be one being in three persons, according to Wycliffe's critics.

Be praying for Bible translators. The job may seem straightforward - exchanging words for other words - but all too often, it is walking a minefield without a map.

Fragment from the World's Oldest Bible Found in Egypt

It may surprise you to learn that we have more copies of the ancient Bible than of any other ancient book in history. But scholars agree the thousands of copies we have are not NEARLY enough as we look to reconstruct the original words that Moses and others put down. Recently, another piece of the puzzle was found as a British Academic found a new fragment of one of the oldest Bible known - the Codex Sinaiticus.

Nikolas Sarris spotted a previously unseen section of the Codex Sinaiticus, which dates from about AD350, as he was trawling through photographs of manuscripts in the library of St Catherine's Monastery in Egypt.

The Codex, handwritten in Greek on animal skin, is the earliest known version of the Bible. Leaves from the priceless tome are divided between four institutions, including St Catherine's Monastery and the British Library, which has held the largest section of the ancient Bible since the Soviet Union sold its collection to Britain in 1933.

Academics from Britain, America, Egypt and Russia collaborated to put the entire Codex online this year but new fragments of the book are occasionally rediscovered.