Last week we introduced Open Theology, an international Open Access, peer-reviewed academic journal of research articles from established and emerging scholars in the field of religion.

The journal has just published its “Bible Translation” topical issue in free, downloadable PDF format. What follows is an excerpt from Mark L. Strauss’ introductory editorial.

For hundreds of millions of people, the Bible is a key source of guidance for ethical decisions, religious faith and practice, and the daily habits of life….

Yet the vast majority of people in the world access the Bible not in its original languages, but in a translation…. Every translation is an interpretation, an attempt to transfer the message of a text in one language into another language. The debate over how best to do this has raged through the centuries…. Translation is much more than a mechanical task; it is both a science and an art.

Complicating these questions of methodology is the reality that the Bible is a sacred text, viewed by (most of) its readers as God’s divine revelation to his people. In light of this, the solemn task of preservation and transmission takes on even greater gravity.

The first major translation of the Bible was the Septuagint, the rendering of the Hebrew Bible into Greek, beginning in the third century BC. Since then there have been tens of thousands of translations into the vernacular of various people groups around the globe. For these readers, their vernacular Bible is the Word of God….

Research related to Bible translation may be divided into three general (and often overlapping) categories: history, theory, and practice. The present edition includes diverse contributions from all three of these categories. Participants include linguists, missiologists, clergy, Bible translators, and biblical scholars.

© 2016 Mark L. Strauss, published by De Gruyter Open. This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 License.

Table of Contents

• Poeticizing the Psalter in an African Language Wendland, Ernst R.
• Freeing Biblical Poetry to Sing Boerger, Brenda H.
• Translating the Old Testament: Learning from the King James Bible Robson, James E.
• Feminist Choices of Early Women Bible Translators Willett, Elizabeth Ann Remington
• Function + Loyalty: Theology Meets Skopos Nord, Christiane
• Translating Common Words Goldingay, John
• Why Was the New Testament Translated into Hebrew? Shuali, Eran
• From Hebrew to Greek: Verbs in Translation in the Book of Ecclesiastes Gorton, Luke
• Between Text and Commentary: A Characteristic Feature of Jewish Bible Versions Greenspoon, Leonard J.