What's in a word: διακρίνω (diakrino) - doubt, discrimination or distinction?

Bible translators have a tough job. In fact, in some ways they can never win. There is just no 1:1 mapping between words and phrases of one language and those of another. Bill Mounce, an expert in biblical Greek who was on the Translation Oversight Committee of the ESV, offers a brilliant lecture on this in his free course, Greek for the Rest of Us. (Go to www.teknia.com, create an account and then look for lecture 1b of this course.) Mounce emphasises,

All translations are interpretive

and goes on to explain that all translators are biased. Bible publishers have to decide in advance what kind of translation they are aiming for.

For example, do they want to use gender-inclusive language? If so, they might translate "your sons" as "your sons and daughters", since that appears to be what is meant in many places of the text (because men were representative of the whole population). Today we no longer see men as representing the general population so it may make more sense to say "your sons and daughters" in a modern English translation. Translators constantly have to wrestle with the issue of whether to interpret words or meanings, and we should not be quick to accuse them of deliberately mistranslating certain texts. If they translate those same texts differently, then other people will be clamouring against them. The only way to win is for every Christian to become thoroughly competent in the biblical languages -- and that ain't gonna happen!

With that background in place I do want to raise a challenging question for the translators of several modern translations, the English Standard Version (ESV, 2001) in particular. It seems to me that they have imposed their theology on a word in Acts 11:12, theology that they probably drew out of other parts of the Bible.

Great New Testament resources online

I recently discovered the new (2010) Lexham English Bible (LEB, New Testament only) which I am very excited about, not least of all because of everything that comes with it. And, like the best things in life, it's free (in electronic format, including PDF and e-Sword).

You can find the LEB at http://www.lexhamenglishbible.com/. Here's what I like about it:

• from a quick scan, it looks a great translation to modern English. See the "About" page on the LEB website for some examples. I noticed the translators are amongst the few to dare to change the traditional "For God so loved the world..." in John 3:16. (See my post on this not-so-good interpretation here: http://templeswallow.blogspot.com/2011/02/what-do-john-316-and-romans-1126-have.html.)
• the LEB is based on good source material: the latest (27th) edition of the Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament (GNT), or NA27;
• and, like the New English Translation (NET), it's free. Here's a quote from the licence agreement: "You can give away the Lexham English Bible, but you can't sell it on its own."

I found the LEB in PDF format through a search engine, but there is currently no link to the PDF format (only to the other formats), so I am putting a copy here for you: Lexham English Bible in PDF. It's 2.7MB.

Things get better when you follow the link from the LEB downloads page to the website of the Society for Biblical Literature (SBL) to get the LEB Reverse Interlinear (woohoo!) - that's an interlinear Bible which uses the English word order. The English text is from the LEB and the Greek is from the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT). It also gives the transliteration for those who don't read Greek, and the Strong's number for each word. Every English word is linked to the original Greek, so you can see where it's coming from. Here's what it looks like (click on it for detail):

Any biblical Greek student has got to be excited about this!

Now that we're onto the SBL website, let me point out some of its great treasures:

1. the SBLGNT is free in various electronic formats (including PDF), and it has critical apparatus to let you know where every word is coming from (i.e. which manuscript compilation);
2. the reverse interlinear New Testament (mentioned above);
3. a fantastic Greek-English 'glossary' as an appendix to the reverse interlinear. Click here for the Strongs Greek-English Glossary.
4. SBL Hebrew keyboard drivers. The one called SIL is the best thing since sliced bread! It's terrific because it matches the Hebrew letters and vowel points logically to the letters of our alphabet. For example, if you want a dalet you press D, and for a lamed you press L. The silent letters aleph and ayin take silent characters (> and < respectively), and the vowels also make sense: press I for a chiriq, O for a cholam, and so on.
5. Book reviews (free e-mail subscription) - a great way to keep abreast of books published;
6. SBL academic journal (not free);
7. SBL Greek and Hebrew fonts.