When I began this project in 2002, I made use of existing Bible translations. I often choose a different one for a particular meditation, in order to find one that came closest to what I thought the Greek text was saying. Yet when using one translation for a particular text, I often was not satisfied with the accuracy of certain words in that text. So I would substitute a word or two from a different translation. And in a few places, I found it necessary to insert a more literal translation of a particular Greek word when I felt that a different English word choice (from a Greek-English lexicon) would serve the meaning of a particular sentence better. Not only did this ‘cut and paste’ approach make the Bible text appear a bit messy, it also had the unintended effect of undermining my student’s confidence in all existing Bible translations.

Then in 2010, several things changed for me. Due to a second burnout, I had to withdraw from active ministry and found myself with time to write—time to work at completing five of the manuscripts that I had started at one time or another during the three previous decades. One of these was a 'harmony' of the Gospels that I had put together as a personal study of the life of Jesus. From 1975 to 1992 I had been using the Jerusalem Bible to do this. But as I was completing the manuscript, I began to see a new way to help my Muslim friends experience the four Gospels as a single oral story and not just as four separate written books. This meant converting my manuscript into a ‘radio drama’ in which the Four (God appointed) Witnesses took turns narrating together one Good News account of the life and teaching of the Messiah.

In 1998 two Wycliffe translators had begun work on preparing this four-voice Harmony as an audio drama in two different languages: in Rif Tamazight (in the Netherlands) and in Jula (in Ivory Coast). But when I requested the cooperation of the publisher of the Jerusalem Bible for a book version in English—to be released with my book of stories, Abu Sharif: The Mystery of the Hundredth Name—I was sent an invoice for £1000 for permission to use their translation. And those overseeing the Rif Tamazicht version suddenly stopped their work, unhappy with the quality of the translator’s work. Thus, only in the Jula language did it finally become an actual radio production in 2002, eliciting enthusiastic responses from Muslim and Christian listeners alike.

By 2010 there were many more Greek-English lexical materials available on the Internet, and I began to realize the significance of the following comment by a New Testament Greek professor: all New Testament translations are interpretations. So as I began to work on my other unfinished ‘harmony’ project (putting Acts and the letters of Paul into a three-voice ‘radio drama’, to bring out intercultural lessons from Paul’s life and writings), I began making my own translation based on the King James version—with the help of various internet lexicons[ii] and my own Greek New Testament.[iii] Two years later I began doing the same with the Gospel Harmony that had lain unpublished for over a decade. And finally The Good News of the Messiah: by the Four Witnesses was published in April 2014.

Thus, as I began preparing to make the Father Meditations public on a website, I decided to revise the ones I had already written by making use of the translation work I had done from the Four Gospels, Acts and the Letters of Paul. By doing this—and by making my own translation for texts from several other New Testament ‘books’—I only needed to use other translations for about 17% of the remaining Old and New Testament texts that would appear in my meditations.[i] Yet besides the practical consideration of not having to pay royalties, my decision was based on several more fundamental considerations.

First, my own experience with the Bible over the past half-century has shown me that switching to using a different translation after four or five years has enhanced my own ability to hear God’s Word. Not only have I done this with English translations, but also with Indonesian and Dutch ones. This is because every translator has a limited perspective—including me! Yet the Word of God, as seen through the perspective of each God-fearing translator, has helped me keep my listening sharp.

Secondly, by using my own translations (which I do not claim to be perfect), I am able to offer a perspective that is often lacking in most English translations—that of an experienced intercultural minister of the Gospel who is also a trained anthropologist. Thus, the second and third reasons for using my own translations have to do with two specific word choices that better illuminate what the New Testament has to say about intercultural relationships within the multi-ethnic family kingdom of the Father, that Jesus came to establish in the power of the Spirit.

All English New Testaments that I have consulted inconsistently translate the Greek word, ethne. This word, which simply means ‘nations’, is only infrequently translated in this way. Mostly it is interpreted as ‘Gentiles’, a borrowed Latin word that literally means ‘peoples’. But when the word ‘Gentiles’ is used, it creates the false impressions for the reader that God sees humanity primarily in terms of two religious categories: God’s people (the Jews, or the Christians) and everybody else (the ‘Gentiles’). Dutch and German compound the problem by using the word the ‘heathen’ where the English translators use ‘Gentiles’. Both of these interpretations also create the false impression that there are actually two different words in Greek: one that supports the more negative word ‘Gentiles’ or ‘heathen’, and another that supports the more neutral word ‘nations’. Now it may be true that many first century Jews used the word ethne, or its Hebrew equivalent goyim, in a derogatory way when speaking about people of other nations. Yet it should be up to the reader to draw this conclusion. Therefore, I have consistently used only ‘nations’ to translate this Greek word—in order to show how God relates to the groups of people that he created (Acts 17:26; Ps.86:9 LXX[iv]).

The third reason for using my own translations relates to a similar way in which the group perspective in the Greek is obscured to most readers, due to a weakness in modern English usage. All the languages I have learned, including Greek, have separate words to distinguish whether an individual or a group is being addressed. The ‘King James’ English of the 17^th century also made this distinction—using ‘thee’ and ‘thou’ to express the 2^nd person singular, and ‘ye’ and ‘you’ to express the 2^nd person plural. But these are now considered old-fashioned words. But this means that the use of ‘you’ in modern English, for both singular and plural, often creates the false impression that a particular text is addressed to individuals rather than to a group of people. To at least help the reader ‘see’ the distinction, I have chosen to only use ‘you’ when an individual is in focus, and ‘YOU (in caps) when more than one person, or a particular group is being addressed. You’ll be surprised how often this can make a difference to the meaning of a particular text.

Finally, and most important to these meditations, I am using my own translation because of the way the common translations of three other key words obscures one of the most important New Testament revelations about how Jesus and the Spirit reveal the Father to us. These Greek words are huioi, huio-thesia and teleios. In many modern translations, the first of these words is often translated as ‘children’ instead of the more literal meaning ‘sons’, in order to be more gender-inclusive. The second, used only five times in the Scriptures and only by Paul, is most often interpreted to mean ‘adoption as sons’, though in Galatians 4:1-5 Paul clearly does not mean ‘adoption’ in the usual sense of the English word. These common translations create the false impression for most Christians that we primarily experience God’s fatherhood in Jesus as adopted and underage children. The third word is inconsistently translated in most translations as either ‘perfect’ or ‘mature’, with the former usage implying that our Father expects us to be ‘perfect’ children, rather than ‘mature’ (adult) sons and daughters.

There are a few other such key words. But I mention these in order to help illustrate why I have chosen to use my own translation. To the reader who is skeptical, because I do not have an advanced degree in Greek, I can only say: Listen prayerfully to my translation and consult the Internet Greek lexical resources for yourself. Then look again at other existing translations. Mostly you will find that apart from the above mentioned word choices, my translation does not diverge radically from the more literal translations in circulation. Yet even if you do not end up agreeing with my translation in certain cases, I will consider these meditations to have fulfilled their purpose, if… I have challenged you to prayerfully listen in a fresh way to the many wonderful things the Scriptures have to say about how God, in Christ, wants to be ‘our Father’ through the Holy Spirit.

[i] Most English Bible translations allow the free use of at least 250 verses without infringing copyright. So by varying my citations from other Bible translations, the use of any one translation does not exceed this limit. For example, I used: under 165 verses from the NRSV, under 150 from the ESV, under 100 from the NIV, under 50 from the HCSB, and less than 20 from any of the other translations listed below. Further, in accordance with the copyright guidelines, no use of any single translation exceeds 10% of the total use of Scripture texts in all of the 99 meditations. 

[ii] Mainly Scripture4all and E-sword. See also Greek Study Helps.

[iii] Kurt Aland, etc. (eds.), The Greek New Testament (3^rd Edition), United Bible Societies, 1984.

[iv] ‘LXX’ is used to designate the Greek Septuagint translation of the Old Testament made during the 2^nd century BCE. The Roman numeral for 70 is used because tradition says it was produced in Alexandria by seventy Jewish scholars.