WORLD EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE CORRECTS WYCLIFFE MISTRANSLATING SON OF GOD

WORLD EVANGELICAL ALLIANCE CORRECTS WYCLIFFE MISTRANSLATING SON OF GOD

The World Evangelical Alliance has just released a report, correcting Wycliffe Bible Translators for mistranslating 'Father' and 'Son' in new Bibles intended for Muslim majority nations. Unfortunately, the WEA report seems to affirm the idea that Muslims may have a legitimate difficulty in understanding the concept of God as 'Father' and 'Son', while I would argue the problem is not understanding, but that Muslims are offended by the Biblical teaching that conflicts with the Qur'an. But overall, it is a victory in the defence of Biblical Truth.

Key WEA recommendations are: "1. The WEA Panel (hereafter referred to as
"Panel") recommends that when the words for "father" and "son" refer to God
the Father and to the Son of God, these words always be translated with the
most
directly equivalent familial words within the given linguistic and cultural
context of the recipients.....

2. The Panel recognizes that there is significant potential for
misunderstanding of the words for "father" and "son" when applied to God,
and that in languages shaped by Islamic cultures, the potential is
especially acute and the misunderstandings likely to
prove especially harmful to the reader's comprehension of the gospel.
Therefore, in case of difficulties, the Panel recommends that translators
consider the addition of qualifying words and/or phrases (explanatory
adjectives, relative clauses, prepositional
phrases, or similar modifiers) to the directly- translated words for
"father" and "son," in order to avoid misunderstanding. For example, as the
biblical context allows, the word for "father" might be rendered with the
equivalent of "heavenly Father" when referring
to God, and the word for "son" might be rendered with the equivalent of
"divine Son," "eternal Son," or "heavenly Son" when referring to Jesus.

The Panel also encourages translators to use paratextual material to clarify and avoid
misunderstanding in these cases.."

Read the WEA full report at:
http://alturl.com/cse79

Wycliffe says they will implement the panels recommendations: "We’re asking our partners and supporters around the world to pray with us as we submit to the panel’s recommendations and move into the implementation phase." http://www.wycliffe.org/sonofgod.aspx Lets pray for Wycliffe as they ask us to.

But the report by WEA Theologians simply confirms the outcry from thousands of concerned Bible believers around the world - and we need to continue to proclaim the message of faithful translation and teaching of the plain truth of scripture no matter how much it offends the hearers of whatever culture. We need to raise the same concerns with those who mistranslate English scriptures to avoid offending feminists.

Philip Rosenthal