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The Word "Baptism" in Gothic
My baptistic friends (or any of my friends that think that only immersion is baptism) will be glad to know that in the Gothic Bible, one of the words that is translated, rather than transliterated, is the word we transliterate “baptism.” In “The Goths of the Fourth Century,” Heather et al. provide the following item:…
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Ulfila and Early Church Priorities
Ulfila (also sometimes written as Ulfilas, Ulphilas, Uliphilus, or the like) is possibly the most famous of the Goths in church history. For those caught up in the terminology of today, no we’re not talking about Emo types, but the Germanic warriors who dominated a big chunk of Europe toward the end of the Roman…
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Is it Important to Pronounce Biblical Names "Authentically"?
Some people point out that the way we pronounce “Jehovah” and “Jesus” today are definitely not the way that the names were pronounced at the time the Pentateuch and Gospels were written. For one thing, pronouncing the names with a hard J sound at the beginning represents the evolution of English/French. Similarly, pronouncing “Jesus” with…
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Luther and the Bible in the Common Tongue
One of the things that was important to the Reformers (as it was to the early church) was that the Word of God be available to people in a language they could understand. This is famously seen in the translational works of Wycliffe and Tyndale, but also in the work of Luther: Luther began his…
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>Rome’s Translation Record
>Over at Greenbaggins, Roman Catholic Taylor Marshall threw out one of the standard lines about Luther changing Scripture. I noted that this Roman propaganda has been debunked already (debunked once – debunked twice). In response, Mr. Marshall tried to come up with some new angles to the old slur. He stated: “One might even say…
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>A Little Bit of Latin is a Dangerous Thing
>It is reported (here) that Google has launched a Latin translation tool (thanks to “Fr. Z” for pointing this out). Like “Fr. Z,” I’m skeptical of the abilities of the machine to properly translate Latin. Nevertheless, this may serve as a valuable to scholars and translators who want to get a running start in translating…
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What Catholic Answers Isn’t Telling You About the New Mass Translation
Over the past few months I’ve seen a number of requests for funding from Catholic Answers to support what is billed as the “new translation” of the Order of the Mass. Some of the earlier requests seemed vague as to why this is important. The latest email claims that the issue is that the current…
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Beware of Imprecise Terminology
The following is a story [FN1], allegedly originally printed by Henry Bebel in 1550 (as shown above)(a late middle English translation and expansion is here). My own modernization [FN2] of the expanded Middle English version follows: Of the Parson that said a Requiem Mass for Christ’s Soul There was a certain country priest that was…
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Non-English Reformation-Era Bibles – Index Page
The Reformation in the British isles was quite remarkable. In fact, it is easy to lose sight of the fact that other nations and tongues in Europe also experienced the Reformation. That said, I thought I’d try to track down some Reformation-era Bibles in other languages than English and provide those to the interested reader.…
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Groves / Sarna to be Cut Down
In a ridiculous mess, pagans in India are complaining about the fact that the Bible commands believers to destroy the places of false worship (link). The errors in the article and in the pagan reaction are legion: 1. The article notes that the translation is “Protestant” and claims that the translation is faulty. This is…