Wednesday, November 19, 2008

Quote - Modern Paraphrases

Over at Pisteuomen, Scott Bailey made a great observation about modern paraphrase translations like The Message and The Voice. I would add that it goes both ways--if modern paraphrases can have a legitimate place, perhaps we shouldn't be so quick to judge their ancient counterparts:

It is highly ironic to me... that most modern Christians would read some of the Pseudepigrapha, or maybe something like Reworked Genesis from Qumran and be uncomfortable, or even highly critical, of the ancient practices, and here we are in our modern times with authors freely adding to the biblical writers--in some cases obfuscating what the original author wrote or adding to it in a way that is not representative of the original--and that's passable.

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