Open Source Bible
I'm considering starting an Open Source Bible project. Basically, a collaborative/communal translation of the Biblical text. The process would include something like discussing various translation possiblities of a given chapter through blog comments and then a panel would decide on the final version edition (but since it's open source it wouldn't be final...so you might have the Gospel of John 1.0, 1.5, 2.0, etc).

This comes out of a couple things for me. First, I find that there are no translations that really capture the grittyness of the originals (at least in the Hebrew and from what I know of Greek it appears to be the same). Most translations--including Peterson's The Message--opt for correctness and acceptability over straight forward interpretations. The other issue is that I find most translations contain a Christianese language that doesn't make sense to those outside a Christian culture (and, truthfully, many of those within).

I had considered making my own personal attempt at putting together a version of the Gospel of John...but then I thought, "hey, why not let a community of people do it?" To make it successful I would need a "panel of experts" to evaluate the suggested translations for the final versions...but the bulk of the ideas would be from all over. Heck, if it worked it might even be cool to put the finished versions in a book format with alternate translation suggestions and comments listed as side notes.

Check out opensourcebible.blogspot.com. Read my comment on John 1 to see a rough example of the suggested revisions. There also can be revisions of revisions, of course. We would post a new version--based upon the suggested revisions--at the end of each week. The process would then begin again until we have a text that is generally agreed upon. We may not ever end up with a finished text, but the process itself would be interesting.

Thoughts? Any linguistics scholars out there who would like to serve on the decision making panel?
posted by Jimmy at 12:37 AM | |