Michael H. Burer's blog

In this third post about words related to the recent controversy over Rob Bell and his book Love Wins, I examine the words gehenna and tartaroō in the NET Bible. (See the first post on sheol in the NET Bible here and the second one on hades here.) Again, my goal is to get a better sense for what we are doing with these passages so we can be sure the NET Bible is helping the church with our translations of these key passages.

In this second post about words related to the recent controversy over Rob Bell and his book Love Wins, I examine the word “hades” in the NET Bible. (See the first post on sheol in the NET Bible here.) Again, my goal is to get a better sense for what we are doing with these passages so we can be sure the NET Bible is helping the church with our translations of these key passages.

Denny Burk, Associate Professor of New Testament and dean of Boyce College, recently posted some discussions from fellow bloggers about the pressure evangelical scholars feel from their secular academic counterparts (and sometimes their fellow evangelicals) to lessen their commitment to the Bible in the context of their academic work. I appreciate this discussion because I feel it, too. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of tweaking our views on the Bible in order to find acceptance in the guild.

Because of the recent brouhaha over Rob Bell’s new book, Love Wins, we all have the chance to think more carefully about how we understand key biblical texts on heaven and hell. See, for example, my colleague Darrell Bock’s recent posts on this point. Much of this discussion centers upon key terms for hell in both the Old and New Testaments. To be sure there are many other angles which we can use to discuss this problem, but the discussion has to start here. And in a real sense, how these terms are translated is important because the Church at large will use the available translations to think about these issues. So this recent discussion made me want to look at how the NET Bible translates some of the key terms which are up for discussion, namely, the Hebrew word sheol and the Greek words hades and gehenna. For this post I took a look at the Hebrew term in the NET Bible, and to be honest I was surprised at what I found.

I was interested to read about the revised version of the New American Bible to be released this week. Many of the things they worked on here are exactly what we have been working on in the NET Bible. Languages constantly change, and Bible translations have to change, too, in order to keep up. Fortunately that's a lot easier to do now than it used to be.

The NET Bible as a translation has been able to plow new ground in two major ways: content and format. Because we have a unique format with extensive notes which explain the translation, we can express valid exegetical decisions which might not be very traditional. One example brought to my attention recently was Ecclesiastes 9:15, which reads like this in the NET Bible:

The NET Bible has some of the best readers in the world. We received this question recently concerning Matthew 26:18. I thought it was great, primarily because of the picture it left in my mind! I've edited it slightly to shorten it a little:

A reader recently left a comment in our comments database with the following question:

The NET Bible translation of Colossians 2:13 begins “And even though.” I assume this is a translation of the KAI that leads into the statement that follows, because there is nothing else in that statement that I’m aware of that could yield the meaning “even though.” But why not take KAI as epexegetic or explanatory? The translation then could be “that is.” Since the statement that follows the connecting KAI has to do with being “co-quickened” - a term that seems to parallel the “co-raised” in the previous verse - it would seem reasonable that Paul is further explaining what he had just stated. Is there any reason to reject such an understanding of Paul’s meaning?

A NET Bible reader recently posted this question in our comments database concerning Matthew 1:23:

"Should the name be Immanuel instead of Emmanuel?"

This is a great question for a number of reasons.

Although not directly related to the NET Bible,

A NET reader recently posted the following question in our online comments database. I thought it was a good question, so I decided to post it here (with some slight editing) along with my response.

The question:

In the first edition of the NET Bible, Matthew 7:13-14 reads as follows:

7:13 “Enter through the narrow gate, because the gate is wide and the way is spacious that leads to destruction, and there are many who enter through it. 7:14 But the gate is narrow and the way is difficult that leads to life, and there are few who find it.

This morning Chris Skinner posted a rejoinder to my interaction with his post. I am glad that we can discuss and interact over this issue. I don't know that we have a solution which we both could agree upon, but careful thinking about the Word and how to communicate that in translation is never in vain.

Dr. Chris Skinner recently blogged about a translation particular to the NET Bible. (Chris and I overlapped at DTS by a number of years, and I consider him a friend, so this is "iron sharpening iron," so to speak.) Let me offer a little background to help set the stage.

A closer look at Genesis 1:1 and Romans 3:22.

A closer look at Psalm 23 and John 3:16.

What it means to be accurate, readable, and elegant.

An introduction to NET Bible Audio Notes

OK, I'll admit it. I have found a verse which at first blush is translated better in the NIV than in the NET Bible.

(Did I really just say this publicly? Yes, and I'll explain why in a moment.) 

I began my graduate work at Dallas Theological Seminary in Fall of 1993. It wasn’t long before I began to hear through the grapevine about Bible.org and the NET Bible. What struck me were two aspects of the project: its distribution model and its quality.

Luke 19:41-48 (NIV)