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Ordinary Christians’ responses to a dramatized reading of the New Testament, together with reflection on research in the area of performance criticism, suggests that understanding of the Bible and spiritual encounter with its texts may be promoted by the reading aloud of, and listening to, substantial portions of the Bible in an unfamiliar format; this might be found in a dramatized presentation and/or a previously unencountered translation. This practice should form part of any programme designed to promote biblical engagement within churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ordinary Christians’ responses to a dramatized reading of the New Testament, together with reflection on research in the area of performance criticism, suggests that understanding of the Bible and spiritual encounter with its texts may be promoted by the reading aloud of, and listening to, substantial portions of the Bible in an unfamiliar format; this might be found in a dramatized presentation and/or a previously unencountered translation. This practice should form part of any programme designed to promote biblical engagement within churches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

African Biblical Studies (ABS) can be characterized both as innovative and reactionary: Innovative, because it refuses to be confined by the methodologies, ancient concerns, and principles that govern biblical studies in the ‘west’ (used throughout this article to refer to the majority Euro-American scholars while recognizing the presence of other groups), and instead charts a course that is more interested in making biblical interpretation relevant to present realities. Reactionary, because its driving force is partly a critique of the inadequacy of western biblical studies in providing meaningful responses to concerns that are pertinent to African communities. A genuine ABS is therefore an amalgamation of multiple interpretive methods, approaches and foci that reflect a creative engagement of the African cosmological reality and the Bible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Desiderius Erasmus was the first to make the Greek New Testament available in printed form. By doing so he established the form the Greek New Testament would take for almost four hundred years. Consequently, vernacular translations based on the Greek reflected that form. In the English-speaking world, where the King James Version dominated until the 1980s, his influence persisted for over 450 years. Some aspects of it persist in the majority of English versions in use today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

N. T. Wright is a widely published author with a large following among those interested in his field of New Testament. In 2011 he published a translation of the New Testament: The New Testament for Everyone. Over some decades Wright has also published on the doctrine of justification, and the insights he feels he has gained are enshrined in his translation. However, a careful comparison of how he has handled the doctrine of justification in Galatians and Romans with what Paul actually wrote, reveals a number of weaknesses in his translation approach as well as an idiosyncratic understanding of the apostle’s concept of justification. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article challenges the common English translation of ὑτεροῦνται in Rom. 3:23 as ‘to fall/come short’, and suggests that this rendering is due to the over-influence of the 1611 King James Version. In the light of the verb’s sense and grammatical relations with other words found in Romans, as well as its typical usage in Paul and the New Testament in general, the article contends that ‘to lack’ is a more helpful translation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]