Tuesday, May 30, 2006

Words for Life

Further to a conversation last night, the Wycliffe Words for Life magazine has some fascinating stories about using spoken translations to provide God's Word to communities with a strong oral tradition... I'm sure Seymour will be pleased to hear this!

Wycliffe are also adamant about the need for Scripture translation in a community's native language - but this is something I'm sure we all agreed on anyway!

1 comments:

Seymour said...

Great links, Clare. Here's another goody: http://www.oralbible.com/obc/

"70% of the world either can not read or prefer communicating using oral methods."

On reflection following last evening's conversation I hope I did not come across as having anything other than a deep love for the scriptures in their written form. Jesus consistently rated them and used them in his teachings. I can't argue for their infallability or inspiration from anything other than the fact that the Holy Spirit continues to use those ancient words to transform me. I am just sorry that there is an assumption out there that people who can't read are somehow destined for spiritual poverty until the day the scriptures appear in their language and can't receive the fullness of the revelation that written scripture is supposed to convey until they are taught to read.

We believe in and preach a Person not a Book and I fear we lose sight of this too easily.

Anyway, I felt the discussion was rich and challenging and sincerely hope I did not offend anyone, or much worse cause any sort of stumbling.