I ran across this a while back and thought it would be good food for thought as a reminder to the broader Christian community to always “worry” over continuously improving their translations and versions of Scripture. As a supply preacher frequently invited to preach across the spectrum of Reformed denominations, I am often asked what the “best” version or translation of Scripture is. (Should we use the NIV, the KJV, the NASB, the ESV, the RSV, the TNIV, the NKJV, etc?) This is the sort of question after a service in a narthex over a cup of coffee that draws a crowd rather quickly. More often than not it is a well-intentioned question by believers seeking to mine the scriptures further after they have just heard a sermon using the breadth of both the Old and New Testament to focus upon a passage. I always want to handle these sorts of questions with care so that one’s confidence in the word of God is augmented while at the same time such confidence is not identified with a sectarian allegiance to a particular translation. And in these cases it is a joy and pleasure to be of assistance. 

In some cases, however, it seems that (more…)

Available now online via Google Books is this treasure of the Protestant church that was typically the standard Latin biblical text of the scholarly Reformed world from 1579 through 1764. An edition of the New Testament was published on its own as early as 1569. Thus this bible stands as a textual bookend for the period of Reformed orthodoxy and was quite influential in its own right. I do not have space to enumerate the multi-national usage of and esteem for this work. But perhaps I can give you a sense of its importance via its publishing history. The first  (more…)

Musculus who? Gratian’s what? Right, two sources probably not in your daily conversation. But if you are interested in connections between Reformed exegesis and ethical formulations and medieval precursors, this is a brief blurb on some prima facie evidence I ran across recently.  (more…)

What’s a Gloss? 

The “study bible” of the late medieval period was called a gloss. Basically it was a rolling commentary including pithy comments from (and sometimes only attributed to) a wide variety of Church Fathers, east and west. Due to its size I am not aware of any English translations of the whole thing. To give you a glimpse of its importance in Medieval theology (and later Protestantism), for example, Thomas Aquinas lectures on and interacts with the Glossa in his  (more…)