current reading projects

I'm continuing to plow through The Contemporary English Version. Today I completed Deuteronomy, and thus The Pentateuch. It is enjoyable to read through such a simple version quickly, having been taking the slow road in the ESV Study Bible for over a year.

At times the CEV is disappointing, because it sometimes takes a rather peculiar line and often it knocks off the edges of the biblical language, in an effort to make it contemporary and comprehensible.

I am also reading through John Sailhamer's The Meaning of the Pentateuch and am pleased to have reached the half-way mark. It is a great book, though longer than it needs to be and very repetitive. But it is a stimulating book to ponder.

And a few days ago I began Robert Culver's Systematic Theology. This is worth reading, but over 1100 pages. I am aiming to read about 20 per day, so that I can get through it in about 4 months. I haven't been good at keeping up such projects previously, though I am on my 9th read-through of Holy Scripture.

Elihu

I have just read through The Book of Job for the 9th time, this time in the Contemporary English Version. My copy is supposed to be an Australian edition and was published by The Indonesian Bible Society. Here and there, the language sounds American, not Australian, though.

I always puzzle over Elihu and read some interesting stuff this morning in The New Dictionary of Biblical Theology and also in The New Bible Commentary.

Clines, who wrote the NBC article, says that Elihu's words in Job 32:2 should read, with the New English Bible, New Living Translation and Contemporary English Version that Job was making himself out to be more righteous than God, and not that he was justifying himself rather than God, as appears in the KJV, NIV, TNIV and ESV.

Sounds like the supposedly looser translations are closer to the truth here than the supposedly more literal translations ... again.