The Journey 215; Reading the Bible or Bible reading you!
Read: Hebrews 4: 12, 13
Fox News reported last week that a new version of the Bible has arrived. This Bible is called “The Voice”. What is unique or some people may say strange is that it has some form of a screen play format. The idea of having screenplay format was devised by Chris Seav, the pastor of the Houston Ecclesia Church who along with Frank Couch, the Vice President of publishing house Thomas Nelson, devised this unique format for the Bible. What Chris used to do in the church was assign different roles to different members as the bible portion were read and this brought about role play and also emoting the role of the Biblical characters. It is was this concept that gave him a vision to translate and bring out a Bible in a screen play format. For this a team of translators worked along side poets and writers and musicians and soon The Voice took shape. What the Voice translation does is that it not only reformats Bible, but also inserts words and phrases into the text to clarify the action or to make an emotion more expressive. For example, In Genesis 3, while reading the depiction of the fall of human being due to sin, you have Adam “pointing fingers at Eve” and then saying the verse 3: 12 [ the woman you put here…….]. Later when Eve bears a son she is “Excited”. This emotion of excitement is brought into the translation. But care has been taken to see to it that the words that clarify the action or emotion are put in italics so that the readers know that these were the additions. The whole vision behind this translation of screen formatting the Bible according to the producers is that they wanted the readers to feel engaged in the biblical text or the biblical story. I believe the effort taken by the publishing house Thomas Nelson to publish the screen play format of Bible is commendable, but we don't know what is in store for the future as new and innovative ideas may be brought into the translation of the Bible. But whatever be the translation of the Bible, whether in prose form or screen play form, until and unless the Word of God is not living and dynamic, having a Bible in our home is of no use.
We are meditating on the theme “ Transformed Living”. The portion that we shall use for our meditation is from Hebrew 4:12,13. One of the questions that people often ask is “Did you read the bible today?”. It is a very relevant question as it is our encounter with God through His Word that recharges and transforms our life. But one of the things that we often forget and which the writer of Hebrews brings to our attention is that the Word of God is very sharp and it has the ability to penetrate deep into the human life, so deep that it can penetrate our souls, our joints and even our marrow. Moreover it also understand and judges the thoughts and the attitudes of our hearts. I think as we encounter God through the Word of God, what is important here is not we reading the Word of God on the contrary the ability of the Bible or the Word of God to read us. It is important that we ask ourselves that as we read the Bible do we allow God to read us, to examine our motives and our thoughts through the Word of God. If this does not happen, the reading of the Word of God would degenerate to a meaningless ritual. I believe this is what is happening in our family devotion time, bible lesson reading during the worship service in the Church and even sometimes during our fellowship and prayer meeting. Let us therefore consciously prepare ourselves to see to it that we allow God to read our life, us through His Word, so that our life is transformed.
Rev. Dr. Joe Joseph Kuruvilla
Fox News reported last week that a new version of the Bible has arrived. This Bible is called “The Voice”. What is unique or some people may say strange is that it has some form of a screen play format. The idea of having screenplay format was devised by Chris Seav, the pastor of the Houston Ecclesia Church who along with Frank Couch, the Vice President of publishing house Thomas Nelson, devised this unique format for the Bible. What Chris used to do in the church was assign different roles to different members as the bible portion were read and this brought about role play and also emoting the role of the Biblical characters. It is was this concept that gave him a vision to translate and bring out a Bible in a screen play format. For this a team of translators worked along side poets and writers and musicians and soon The Voice took shape. What the Voice translation does is that it not only reformats Bible, but also inserts words and phrases into the text to clarify the action or to make an emotion more expressive. For example, In Genesis 3, while reading the depiction of the fall of human being due to sin, you have Adam “pointing fingers at Eve” and then saying the verse 3: 12 [ the woman you put here…….]. Later when Eve bears a son she is “Excited”. This emotion of excitement is brought into the translation. But care has been taken to see to it that the words that clarify the action or emotion are put in italics so that the readers know that these were the additions. The whole vision behind this translation of screen formatting the Bible according to the producers is that they wanted the readers to feel engaged in the biblical text or the biblical story. I believe the effort taken by the publishing house Thomas Nelson to publish the screen play format of Bible is commendable, but we don't know what is in store for the future as new and innovative ideas may be brought into the translation of the Bible. But whatever be the translation of the Bible, whether in prose form or screen play form, until and unless the Word of God is not living and dynamic, having a Bible in our home is of no use.
We are meditating on the theme “ Transformed Living”. The portion that we shall use for our meditation is from Hebrew 4:12,13. One of the questions that people often ask is “Did you read the bible today?”. It is a very relevant question as it is our encounter with God through His Word that recharges and transforms our life. But one of the things that we often forget and which the writer of Hebrews brings to our attention is that the Word of God is very sharp and it has the ability to penetrate deep into the human life, so deep that it can penetrate our souls, our joints and even our marrow. Moreover it also understand and judges the thoughts and the attitudes of our hearts. I think as we encounter God through the Word of God, what is important here is not we reading the Word of God on the contrary the ability of the Bible or the Word of God to read us. It is important that we ask ourselves that as we read the Bible do we allow God to read us, to examine our motives and our thoughts through the Word of God. If this does not happen, the reading of the Word of God would degenerate to a meaningless ritual. I believe this is what is happening in our family devotion time, bible lesson reading during the worship service in the Church and even sometimes during our fellowship and prayer meeting. Let us therefore consciously prepare ourselves to see to it that we allow God to read our life, us through His Word, so that our life is transformed.
Rev. Dr. Joe Joseph Kuruvilla