Lake Neuron

I hadn’t been in our local Christian bookstore in ages, but they’re having a big sale and I needed to buy a birthday present, so I popped in today. I found a suitable present (I’ll tell you about it after it’s been given), but I also bought something for myself: a TNIV / The Message//Remix parallel Bible. Ironically, I had paperback New Testaments of each of those versions, but not the whole Bible.

The TNIV (Today’s New International Version) was somewhat controversial when first released; it had some gender-neutral passages which the translators said were accurate but which critics called revisionist. But I like what I’ve read of the version, and I once heard someone from Cokesbury say that it was our current bishop’s favorite version, in spite of the fact that much of the official United Methodist literature uses the NRSV. (Gavin, maybe you could ask the bishop about this the next time your fly is open.)

The Message is a paraphrase, not a translation, and so I would never rely on it as my only Bible. But it’s powerful and vivid, and my own pastor uses it quite often from the pulpit. The Message//Remix is pretty much identical to the original except that it’s annotated to help you figure out verse numbers.

Unfortunately, this is relatively small volume, and so the print is really small, something that wouldn’t have been as much of a concern five or six years ago.

Tags : bible | United Methodist