Our parents are all visiting us this holiday weekend. Earlier today, all the guys (me, my dad, my father-in-law, and my son) headed over to the General Patton Museum east of Indio. It was a nice half-day excursion with lots of tanks, guns, uniforms, and other war paraphenalia on display.

One of the exhibits we saw was a Bible with a piece of shrapnel stuck into it. Apparently, a soldier was carrying the Bible at the time an explosion went off. Were it not for that Bible, a piece of jagged metal would have sliced right through that soldier’s chest. The Bible literally saved his life!

What a great illustration of the life-giving power of God’s Word. Every day, the Bible saves lives by turning people away from sin and leading them to eternal life in Jesus Christ.

Your word is a lamp to my feet And a light to my path…My life is continually in my hand, Yet I do not forget Your law. (Psalm 119:105, 109)

Never underestimate the life-saving power of God’s Word.

From the ESV Study Bible website:

“The ESV Study Bible was created to help people understand the Bible in a deeper way—to understand the timeless truth of God’s Word as a powerful, compelling, life-changing reality. To accomplish this, the ESV Study Bible combines the best and most recent evangelical Christian scholarship with the highly regarded ESV Bible text. The result is the most comprehensive study Bible ever published—with more than 2,750 pages of extensive, accessible Bible resources.

With completely new notes, maps, illustrations, charts, timelines, and articles, the ESV Study Bible was created by an outstanding team of 93 evangelical Christian scholars and teachers. In addition to the 757,000 words of the ESV Bible itself, the notes and resources of the ESV Study Bible comprise an additional 1.1 million words of insightful explanation and teaching.”

This study Bible looks terrific. I already like the MacArthur Study Bible, but I expect every Christian would really benefit by adding one of these ESV Study Bibles to their library.

The publishers are offering a 35% discount now through Thursday, May 15. The starting price for the hardcover is $32.49. You can click here to pre-order. Shipping will begin in mid-October. As an added bonus, the online edition will be available free to all who purchase a copy of the print edition.

Someone recently asked me what I thought of the Holman Christian Standard Bible (HCSB). This translation was published in 2003 and is doing quite well. In fact, it ranked #7 in Bible translation sales in February, beating out The Message and my own personal preference, the New American Standard Bible (you can see the full report on the CBMW Gender blog). In the introduction to the HCSB, the editors list four goals:

• to provide English-speaking people across the world with an accurate, readable Bible in contemporary English
• to equip serious Bible students with an accurate translation for personal study, private devotions, and memorization
• to give those who love God’s word a text that is easy to read, visually attractive on the page, and appealing when heard
• to affirm the authority of the Scriptures as God’s inerrant word and to champion its absolutes against social or cultural agendas that would compromise its accuracy

In his book How to Choose a Bible Version, Robert Thomas gives a mixed review of the Holman Bible. (The parenthetical numbers represent his five main criteria for choosing a Bible.) He says,

The HCSB has the same goal as many other versions of the Bible: to obtain the ideal balance between faithfulness to the original text and readability. It has probably sacrificed too much of the former in order to achieve the latter, however. For example, it has omitted many conjunctions of the Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek originals, and has rarely if ever translated into English the original’s basis for the familiar ‘and it came to pass’ (KJV) or ‘and it came about’ (NASB) that occurs so frequently in the text. That and similar factors reduce the effectiveness of this version as a study tool (#3). The presence of two English stylists on the eight-member editorial committee overseeing the project probably accounts for the diminishing of literal renderings, but also increases the readability value for the casual reader (#5). Also, the version’s decision to render the Greek word Christos as ‘Christ’ in some context (426 times) and ‘Messiah’ (125 times) in others introduces interpretation of the translators into the text and thereby weakens its value as a study tool (#3). As a rule, the HCSB has allowed an Alexandrian text-type, but has clouded the issue by not clarifying instances where the reader must choose between the Alexandrian and Byzantine text-types. The version has created this confusion by including ancient uninspired texts from Christian tradition and interpretation alongside the inspired text without alerting the lay reader in each place which text is inspired and which is not. This is a weakness in the area of textual basis (#2) as it is also in the area of theological bias (#4) because it implies a weak view of biblical inspiration. One would hasten to say, however, that this impression does not reflect the translators’ view on the inerrancy of Scripture. As a whole, the version is theologically conservative, including its determination to avoid gender neutral inclinations (#4). Of course, the HCSB falls outside the Tyndale tradition of translations and thus possesses no historical lineage (#1). (quoted from pp. 156-57).

Picture a line with word ‘readable’ on the far left, and ‘literal’ on the far right. Every Bible translation falls somewhere on this continuum. Versions on the left side are what scholars call ‘dynamic equivalence,’ while versions on the right side are ‘formal equivalence.’ The goal is to find a translation that finds a balance of both, but there is always going to be a trade-off. In general, the more readable or conversational your translation is in English, the less faithful it will be to the original Hebrew or Greek.

I think it’s good for many people to start with a more readable translation, like the NIV or HCSB, and then gradually work toward a more literal translation like the NASB, NKJV, or ESV once they become more skilled at reading and more familiar with the flow of Scripture. The more literal versions are not as enjoyable from a literary standpoint, but they are more conducive for deep Bible study.

Perhaps the best solution is to keep 3-4 translations at your fingertips and to compare between them regularly. But I think we all eventually fall in love with one particular translation. And as long as we are regularly reading and applying it, that can be a very good thing.


December 2010 Update: I’m becoming more and more impressed with this translation, and have been giving it a “test drive” from the pulpit this month. With the Apologetics Study Bible, HCSB Study Bible, and a 2009 revision, I believe this translation has really matured and gone more mainstream. Here’s a paper by Dr. Bill Barrick showing the exegetical accuracy of the HCSB. 

October 2011 Update: After a year of testing, I finally decided to go with the ESV translation. Click here to find out why.

I have recently been reading through a short book called The Expository Genius of John Calvin, by Steven Lawson. Here are a couple quotes I’ve appreciated on Calvin’s high view of Scripture, why Christians should always remain students of the Bible, and why pastors should devote themselves continually to the ministry of the Word.

“We owe to the Scripture the same reverence which we owe to God because it has proceeded from Him alone, and has nothing of man mixed with it.”

“Wherever the gospel is preached, it is as if God Himself came into the midst of us. It is certain that if we come to church we shall not hear only a mortal man speaking, but we shall feel (even by His secret power) that God is speaking to our souls that He is the teacher. He so touches us that the human voice enters into us and so profits us that we are refreshed and nourished by it. God calls us to Him as if He had His mouth open and we saw Him there in person.”

These words remind me of Paul when he commended the Thessalonians: “For this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs its work in you who believe” (1 Thess. 2:13).

What a privilege to have this precious book, where God Himself speaks! May our souls pant for it day after day, as a deer pants after the water brooks.

In our evangelism Sunday School class, we’ve been studying through the Two Ways to Live curriculum. It’s an excellent presentation that breaks the gospel down into six basic points. Interestingly, rather than starting with sin, or God’s “wonderful plan” for our lives, The Two Ways to Live outline begins with creation. The first point says “God is the loving ruler of the world. He made the world. He made us rulers of the world under Him.”

Creation is a vital doctrine that we often sell short. In an age of enlightenment, creationism is usually portrayed as primitive, superstitious, and unscientific. Richard Dawkins, for example, calls creationism a “preposterous, mind-shrinking falsehood.” The Bible, on the other hand, actually begins with creation. It’s the first building block of an accurate worldview. Without creation, the rest of the gospel is absurd.

The first verse in the Bible says, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen. 1:1). There is a remarkable amount of theology and scientific data wrapped up in this verse.

• The phrase “in the beginning” confirms that all matter did have a beginning. It had a first cause. And there was a pre-existent, intelligent Being who initiated the “beginning” of the world.

• The statement “God created” is a declarative, matter-of-fact statement. Elohim, the all-powerful God of the Bible, created without using any tools or supplies. He created ex nihlo, “out of nothing,” by the power of His word (Gen. 1:3).

• The last phrase tells us precisely what God created: “the heavens and the earth.” This is a Hebrew figure of speech called a “merism.” By mentioning the two extremes, it captures everything in between (cf. “morning and evening”). It’s a poetic way of saying “God created everything,” and it summarizes what the rest of chapter one will describe in closer detail.

Now, the question is, are you willing to accept this bold claim in Genesis 1:1? “But it requires a leap of faith,” you say. Yes, I agree. Hebrews 11:3 even states, “By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible.” But faith does not contradict reason. We don’t need to jettison our heads in order to believe with our hearts. In fact, I would contend the leap of faith in creationism is far more reasonable than the leap of faith in evolution. When we look at the universe through the interpretive lens of Scripture, we find that every scientific detail makes perfect sense from a creationist worldview. And there are three implications that result:

• Because God created the universe, it was very good. Genesis 1:31 says, “God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good…” Since God is holy and morally perfect, all the work of His hands must have been good. It is comforting to know that all the sickness, pain, injustice, and disappointment in this world were not part of God’s original design, but a result of man’s fall (Gen. 3). But as God continues His work of redemption through Jesus Christ, He is reversing the curse of the Fall, first in our hearts, and ultimately upon the earth itself.

• Because God created the universe, it is very sophisticated. The Bible depicts this world as the handiwork of a highly skilled and powerful God. In Psalm 8:3, David writes, “When I consider Your heavens, the work of Your fingers, the moon and the stars, which You have ordained; What is man?” The heavens are just one aspect of God’s creation, but they provide ample proof for an intelligent Creator. Take our sun for example. Jonathan Sarfati explains that our sun is an extremely powerful object, often throwing out flares, and occasionally belching out coronal mass ejections (CME). These CMEs cause huge electric currents in the earth’s upper atmosphere and disrupt power grids and satellites. But compared to other stars, the sun turns out to be ‘exceptionally stable.’ If the sun were to erupt as frequently or intensely as most other stars, the ‘superflares’ would destroy the earth’s ozone layer with catastrophic results for life. It is no coincidence that we are located at just the right distance from such an exceptionally stable star. This is the handiwork of our Master Architect.

• Because God created the universe, we are answerable to Him. He made us, and thus He has the authority to tell us how to live, what to do, and what not to do. God had the prerogative to command Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it” (Gen. 1:28), then later to stipulate, “From any tree of the garden you may eat freely; but from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat” (Gen. 2:16-17). Likewise, as our Creator, God has the right to command us to “be holy, as He is holy” (1 Pet. 1:16), and to judge us when we rebel against Him. As His creatures, we are answerable to Him, and deserving of His punishment when we fail. And this, of course, explains why so many reject creation today: because creation involves accountability to a Creator.

Next Wednesday, I will continue this study on creation, considering how God created the world, and whether or not He did it in six literal days.