<\/a>in 2011.<\/p>\n“I was trying to serve both the translators and the reader,” he explains, “so that all the unnecessary distractions of antiquated spelling and odd punctuation were removed.”<\/p>\n
So, what was it like to follow in the footsteps of such\u00a0giants of the\u00a0faith\u00a0as St. Jerome and\u00a0John Wycliffe?<\/p>\n
“Humbled but useful, like a charlady [janitor] in a Cathedral.”\u00a0says the professor of English at New Zealand’s Victoria University\u00a0of Wellington.\u00a0“It was a great honor and responsibility to work on so great a book.<\/p>\n
“I wasn\u2019t doing work comparable to that of the translators. Every cathedral needs its charlady to keep it clean, and a craftsman to do little bits of restoration work.<\/p>\n
“I was working to get as truly as possible the text the translators themselves had decided on, and then to present it in the spelling they would have used today.”<\/p>\n
“I suspect that the King James translators, commissioned to revise the work of Tyndale and his successors felt both honored and, like the charlady, humbled,” he says. “I took the translators\u2019 words as my motto, \u2018Do nothing without advice, and when thou hast once done, repent not.\u2019”<\/p>\n
His new book is available from Cambridge University Press.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What if you were asked to translate the Bible? Today, hundreds of scholars are doing just that in the jungles of South America, Africa and the Pacific, bringing God’s word to cultures whose language has no Holy Bible in their native tongue.\u00a0In universities and libraries worldwide,\u00a0scholars are also updating existing translations in Spanish, Russian and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
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Today, hundreds of scholars are doing just that in the jungles of South America, Africa and the Pacific, bringing God’s word to cultures whose language has no Holy Bible in their native tongue.\u00a0In universities and libraries worldwide,\u00a0scholars are also updating existing translations in Spanish, Russian and…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/03\/what-does-it-feel-like-to-translate-the-bible.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-03-29T19:01:36+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2011-03-30T00:30:40+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/files\/2011\/03\/KJV-norton-210x300.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"What does it feel like to translate the Bible? - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/on_the_front_lines_of_the_culture_wars\/2011\/03\/what-does-it-feel-like-to-translate-the-bible.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"What does it feel like to translate the Bible? - On the Front Lines of the Culture Wars","og_description":"What if you were asked to translate the Bible? 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<\/a>