Philip Nation on Gospel Accessibility and The Open Bible
Phillip Nation joins the podcast today for a discussion that centers on the importance of making Scripture accessible to all individuals, regardless of their prior experience or familiarity with the Bible. Philip Nation, a distinguished pastor and publisher at Thomas Nelson, possesses a profound passion for ensuring that God's Word is engaging and comprehensible. Our dialogue explores the significant contributions of the Open Bible, especially as we commemorate its 50th anniversary, highlighting its unique features such as a comprehensive topical index that facilitates deeper exploration of biblical themes. We further explore various translations, specifically emphasizing the merits of the New King James Version, and the necessity of encouraging both seasoned readers and novices to actively engage with Scripture. Ultimately, our conversation seeks to inspire a renewed commitment to studying the Bible with intention and community, providing practical insights for fostering a vibrant relationship with God's Word.
Takeaways:
- Philip Nation discusses the importance of making Scripture accessible for all believers.
- He emphasizes the need for intentional Bible study and providing practical tools for engagement.
- The Open Bible serves as a valuable resource for understanding and connecting Scripture.
- Nation highlights the friction points that hinder engagement with the Bible in today's fast-paced world.
- A call to action is made for church leaders to foster deeper biblical literacy and understanding.
Transcript
Hey there and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.
Speaker A:This podcast is all about providing clarity in life and mission.
Speaker A:And my name is Aaron Sandemier and I'm going to be your host.
Speaker A:Today we have the phenomenal opportunity to sit down with Philip Nation.
Speaker A:Philip is a pastor.
Speaker A:He's been a pastor, a church planner, speaker.
Speaker A:Currently he works at Thomas Nelson and he works.
Speaker A:And he has a love for scripture being accessible.
Speaker A:We sit down and have a discussion about God's Word, but then also specifically highlighting the 50th anniversary of the Open Bible.
Speaker A:It's a study Bible and brings a lot of unique insights and tools as Philip wants people to be able to engage with God's Word and learn to study and grow from it.
Speaker A:And just a phenomenal discussion with him.
Speaker A:We talk about the new King James Version, we talk about different translations of the Bible, which one is maybe more accurate or more literal.
Speaker A:And he provides some great insight on that.
Speaker A:That's something, you know, growing up in the church, I would hear people say this one is this and this one is that.
Speaker A:And he definitely knows his stuff.
Speaker A:And so it was just a joy to learn from him when it comes to this and the Open Bible and what a resource it is for those who are growing.
Speaker A:We also discuss, you know, maybe you've been reading the Bible for 25 years or maybe this is your first time reengaging with the Bible in this way, in a study way.
Speaker A:And so just a joy to he gives some great insight and how we can do that in an intentional way.
Speaker A:Do want to ask you to continue to send in your questions for backchannel with Foeth.
Speaker A:That's where we get to sit down with Dick Foth and get to learn from him.
Speaker A:It's always a joy to have Dick on the podcast.
Speaker A:Do want to ask you also to subscribe to the podcast?
Speaker A:I know the podcast I subscribe to.
Speaker A:They're the ones that show up on my feed on Monday or Tuesday.
Speaker A:And Aaron Santemayer knows what he's going to be listening to throughout the week.
Speaker A:Do want to thank you all for continuing to listen into the podcast.
Speaker A:Many of you have listened to many of the 300 plus episodes and really appreciate that and it's been a fun ride.
Speaker A:It's been joy just to get to learn from people like Philip and have great discussions.
Speaker A:Well, there's no time better than now to get started.
Speaker A:So here we go.
Speaker A:Greetings and welcome back to the Clarity Podcast.
Speaker A:So excited to be here today with a new friend of the podcast, Philip.
Speaker A:Welcome to the podcast.
Speaker B:Well, thank You.
Speaker B:It's great to be on with you, Aaron.
Speaker B:Looking forward to this conversation and just some fun times ahead.
Speaker A:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:Philip.
Speaker A:You know, the joy of being a podcast host is you get to read lots of great stuff and get to meet a lot of great people.
Speaker A:For those who have not got to do the background search on you that I've got to do.
Speaker A:Will you share a little bit about yourself before we jump into some questions?
Speaker B:Absolutely.
Speaker B:Always happy to talk about how God has brought me to this place in life, but I mean, the most important things are I'm married.
Speaker B:Angie and I have been married for 31 years.
Speaker B:We've got two grown sons that they're both married.
Speaker B:One of our sons, he and his wife have two children.
Speaker B:So we became grandparents almost two years ago.
Speaker B:So we've got, at the time of this recording, we've got a granddaughter who is just a month shy of her second birthday and then a grandson who is seven months old or eight months old.
Speaker B:And so they're close together, they've got a very busy house and God in his mercy.
Speaker B:I became a believer at a pretty young age during childhood and then started feeling a call toward ministry when I was in my teenage years.
Speaker B:And so through the years I have served as a full time pastor, planted a church.
Speaker B:I've worked with churches through revitalizations.
Speaker B: But then around: Speaker B:And from that time on I've done a combination of local church ministry and preaching kind of here, there and wherever and.
Speaker B:But now over the last five and a half years, I've been able to serve as the publisher for Thomas Nelson Bibles, which is a pretty great gig.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, for sure.
Speaker A:No, that's exciting and a joy.
Speaker A:Philip, got some questions for you.
Speaker A:So one of the things that I recognized as I looked through your heart and passion was this idea of making Scripture accessible.
Speaker A:So what is meant by making scripture.
Speaker B:Accessible for me personally and professionally?
Speaker B:And this is where I get the blessing that these two things collide and intersect in my life, but from just as a believer, a husband, a father, a pastor, someone who preaches and teaches, I want people to become self feeders so that there's not just constantly a reliance on another person to be able to mine the depths of Scripture.
Speaker B:Now that's not that I want to get people out of community.
Speaker B:I believe that the spiritual work of us studying the Word is something that we do as a community of faith.
Speaker B:We do it as congregations, as Bible study groups, as parents with our children, friends with one another.
Speaker B:But I do want to make sure that I move out of the model of where I think I was as a young pastor of wagging my finger from the pulpit and saying, everybody go and read your Bibles.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:Kind of with the assumption that everybody knew how to go study how to study Scripture.
Speaker B:And I've matured enough to know not everybody knows how to study Scripture.
Speaker B:So how do we equip people not just to kind of passively read, but to actively study?
Speaker B:And so then as someone who's gotten to enter into this space of Christian publishing where I've been the writer, I've been the publisher, I've overseeing the Bible study curriculum area at another publishing company and now publishing Bibles that includes everything from the pew Bible at your church to the big beefy study Bibles.
Speaker B:We want to produce editions of the Bible that engage you so that you feel like the pull to the sacred Scripture by what you're experiencing with this physical or digital copy of God's word.
Speaker B:And so I just love the idea, the theolog logical premise that God has given us his self revelation.
Speaker B:And so how many people can we get into the, into the rhythm and the rigor of Bible study and reading that's just now the, the work of my life?
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:You mentioned getting people engaged in Scripture.
Speaker A:What are some of the friction points you see in getting people engaged and making scripture accessible?
Speaker B:Friction points.
Speaker B:That's a great.
Speaker B:I love that phrase.
Speaker B:I'm gonna completely rip you off on that one.
Speaker B:That's gonna, you're gonna see that on a blog post sometime.
Speaker B:No, no, the, the friction points that happen in terms of why or why do people somehow deflect off of it?
Speaker B:One I think is just the pace of our modern life and its pace.
Speaker B:I think it's distraction.
Speaker B:There is a, there's a, there's a sin component here of our own apathy and, or rebellion.
Speaker B:But if I start with pace, knowing how we work now, let me preface this by saying I get to be a Bible publisher, which sounds like a really cool job.
Speaker B:Like I'm sitting around with my Hebrew text and my Greek text all day long and that's not what I do.
Speaker B:I, you know, Thomas Nelson Bibles is a part of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, which is a part of HarperCollins.
Speaker B:We are a global for profit company where our division is tasked with publishing Christian material, Christian books, Bible studies and Bibles.
Speaker B:And so I get the intersection of my faith and business, but I spend most of my days in Excel Spreadsheets with inventory summary reports with P and L, you know, reviewing sales data, of planning the production pipeline, of working with our typesetters, our art directors, our, you know, the, the guy who oversees the physical production of Bibles.
Speaker B:I, I'm, you know, I'm trained as a theologian, but I work as a businessman.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So I have come so much closer living this, this world of knowing that there is a manic pace to people's lives.
Speaker B:And I think that that stands very much as a friction point and it always has.
Speaker B:And so for your listeners that serve in the ministry, I want to encourage them to pause, you know, as you're prepping sermons, as you're prepping ministry plans, as you're prepping discipleship strategies.
Speaker B:And just remember that people are not, they're not always unwilling.
Speaker B:Sometimes they feel as if they are incapable, as if they are beyond capacity.
Speaker B:And so I think that that's one of the friction points is how do we retask in our lives the time that we have so that we can delve into scripture?
Speaker B:And then I think that that leads into the second point that I mentioned and that's distractions.
Speaker B:I mean, just right off camera, I have my mobile phone, my smart device, I've got my laptop I'm looking into, I've got a secondary monitor over here to my right.
Speaker B:You know, as soon as this recording is over, I will jump right back into life, you know, as I think it is.
Speaker B:But we wind up doom scrolling with our smartphones, we wind up binge watching the next, you know, television series that's on.
Speaker B:There's, there's a myriad of lesser distractions in our lives that we allow that to be an escapism from the hard edges of life rather than looking at the hard edges of life and saying, rather than giving into escapism, let me go look for the real answers, let me go do the real work of forming my faith.
Speaker B:And so I think that those two certainly are big factors that are the friction.
Speaker B:And I'll just say it briefly and we can delve into it as you wish.
Speaker B:I think some of it is just also a third issue is just, it's an unknown.
Speaker B:People don't know how to study the Scripture.
Speaker B:Just like I said as a young minister, I kind of assumed everybody knew how to do it because I did, or that everybody would go figure it out.
Speaker B:And the Bible can be a daunting book to try to dig into.
Speaker B:And so people don't know how.
Speaker B:And so that is another friction point for them for sure.
Speaker A:So let's look at kind of two different groups of people.
Speaker A:And so what about the people as far as engaging in scripture for people that maybe it is a daunting task.
Speaker A:And you know, a lot of people listening to this podcast are disciples making, making disciples.
Speaker A:Any wisdom on how you can, how they can encourage others to engage in God's word, to study, study the Bible without being overwhelmed by it?
Speaker A:Maybe some do's and don'ts on that.
Speaker B:Yeah, I would say first in this vein, one of the things that I want to encourage leaders to do is to acknowledge to somebody who has never really studied the Bible very much, acknowledge with them.
Speaker B:This is a, this feels monumental.
Speaker B:And that's okay.
Speaker B:So at Thomas Nelson we had commissioned back in the 70s and now we currently continue to steward the new King James Version.
Speaker B:That's a primary translation for us.
Speaker B:So I know all the factoids around it.
Speaker B:And so the new King James version of the Bible, the scripture text is 771,569 words.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker B:It is likely three times longer than any novel that a regular person is ever going to read.
Speaker B:And so it's okay for us to acknowledge, hey, this, you're going into something that feels like a wall of words.
Speaker B:So let's just put that out there.
Speaker B:That's okay.
Speaker B: verses, it's: Speaker B: nents over the course of over: Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker B:So let's just get that out there and just go ahead and acknowledge that with them that hey, it's okay for this to be new.
Speaker B:So let's then find bite sized ways to move you forward.
Speaker B:And I want to encourage people, look at a two week window of your life now with, with those of us that are leaders, that are guys, we often think of taking on a task and we imagine what the finished product is.
Speaker B:And if we can't hit the finished product kind of form pretty quickly, we get very frustrated and there's a lot of give up in us.
Speaker B:And so instead I want to encourage leaders to think about how do you position what is a starting, what does starting look like?
Speaker B:And so what would it look like for you to start studying, reading the Bible and take it at a two week kind of chunk and help people to just walk through.
Speaker B:Like what would it look like for you to read the book of James, five chapters and you're going to read it one chapter a day and you're going to do that for two weeks or three weeks and, or you're going to do it for, you know, you're going to go through a cycle of doing it.
Speaker B:You're going to do it for 15 days, one chapter, you know, a day, and you're going to read the book three times.
Speaker B:And so do give people just an easy handhold, but do also give them a plan.
Speaker B:Don't just tell them, go read your Bible because they won't know where to start, where to stop, what all of these subheadings and cross references and all of these different gizmos and gadgets that feel like are in the text of the Bible.
Speaker B:And so give them a simple plan to get going, but don't shame, do hold them accountable, but don't shame them.
Speaker B:I mean, those are two very different things that sometimes as Western Christians, we're really bad at deciphering between the two.
Speaker B:And Aaron, as someone who has served out on the mission field, I'm sure you've had to navigate through the right, wrong versus shame honor cultures and so help them through that.
Speaker B:And there's some of the starting points.
Speaker A:I would get all that's and great, great nuggets of wisdom.
Speaker A:And so maybe, I know it's not dichotomous, but another group of people, maybe there's the other group of people.
Speaker A:What would be some encouragement for them or tips for people to stay engaged?
Speaker A:Maybe they've studied it for years.
Speaker A:Maybe they, they've grown up in the church.
Speaker A:Maybe they've read through the Bible a few times.
Speaker A:What are some tips for them to stay engaged with Scripture?
Speaker B:I start with, with this group that, that they've been in the Word for a long time.
Speaker B:And it's not that it becomes lackluster or boring or pedestrian, but I mean, it's just the nature of humanity that we move to atrophy.
Speaker B:So I would say to them, even though you've got a primary translation that you read from that your church uses, I would say find a second translation.
Speaker B:If you, if your primary translation is very formal or as oftentimes people will say very word for word or very literal.
Speaker B:I like, I like the term formal a little bit better.
Speaker B:Then find a dynamic or a more phrase for phrase translation as a second translation to, to read or vice versa.
Speaker B:And, and so using a second translation will, sometimes it will kind of refresh the whole process of reading.
Speaker B:A second encouragement that I want to give is go and visit the portions of scripture that, that, you know, the pages are still stuck together a little bit in Your Bible, the clean white pages that you haven't visited as much.
Speaker B:Most of us who have, who read the Bible a lot, we fall into the.
Speaker B:Well, my favorite book of the Bible is or my favorite part of the Bible, or they have a kind of a favorite genre.
Speaker B:They really love Paul's epistles, or they really love the Old Testament history.
Speaker B:You know, well, what is a portion of scripture that you don't visit as often?
Speaker B:And just make a commitment that I'm going to go, you know, dig into the Old Testament poetry.
Speaker B:I'm going to get into the general Epistle of First and Second, Peter and Hebrews and James, rather than always being in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians and all of Paul's writings.
Speaker B:If you've got a favorite gospel, read the one that's not your favorite gospel, read the one that you've read the least.
Speaker B:I think that then that helps to kind of infuse.
Speaker B:And the third thing that I would leave with people that are very used to reading the Bible is go through a season where you read with a friend.
Speaker B:Several years ago, a buddy of mine said, hey, you read the Bible a lot.
Speaker B:I read the Bible a lot.
Speaker B:And he said, I would like to encourage you to do the Proverbs challenge with me.
Speaker B:And I had read the book of proverbs, 31 chapters in a month, one chapter a day, you get the whole book in a month.
Speaker B:And he said, let's do that.
Speaker B:But every day after you read the chapter, I want you just to text me one sentence, one thing that you gleaned from the chapter.
Speaker B:And I wound up doing that with other people where it just became like, oh, this is just this cool way to like see what somebody else observed from the same portion of Scripture.
Speaker B:It didn't entail a long conversation.
Speaker B:We weren't doing a Bible study together.
Speaker B:It was just a way for two brothers just to encourage one another's faith, one another's engagement with the scripture.
Speaker B:So find, find a buddy and, and read the scripture with them.
Speaker A:It's a good word.
Speaker A:You know, my mom, I, I'm not saying this is a great thing, but by my mom, when I was young, she paid me to read the Bible.
Speaker A:So she gave me a one year Bible.
Speaker A:And she told me, you know, at the end of the year, if I had read through it, I would get $2 a week.
Speaker A:So it was $104 at the end.
Speaker A:And you know, honestly love for scripture, I can't tell you the first year I read it through, I had the best motives and the best ideas.
Speaker A:But the amazing thing about scripture is if you're engaged with it and you do it daily, it has a, it has a way of growing on you, you know, and the things that I learned in those times.
Speaker A:And so anyway, I think back, you know, I don't know if the, her method was, but it, it ended up having huge impact on my life.
Speaker A:And I did it for many years and, and have done it ever since then.
Speaker A:Ever since.
Speaker A:You know, I've read through the Bible every year since the age of 12, you know, but those first few years was for the money.
Speaker A:And then the last, you know, 20, 25, 30 years have been for the love of God's word, but a creative way, right?
Speaker A:A creative way to get your kids involved in Scripture.
Speaker A:And it created, created a love in me for it.
Speaker A:So you mentioned, I just wanted to come back to one thing you mentioned.
Speaker A:You prefer formal translation versus word for word.
Speaker A:I know you made a distinction there.
Speaker A:Any thoughts on that?
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker B:So chances are some of the people who are listening into this conversation, they've seen one of those translation spectrum charts of where does the NIV sit?
Speaker B:Where does the NKJV and the NASB and the NLT and all of these other translations, where do they all sit on the spectrum?
Speaker B:And should you be getting one, should you aim for one that's right in the middle?
Speaker B:And in general, those of us that, like, this is our work, and I think then biblical scholars who work in the academy and serve on translation committees generally, we have moved more toward the idea, these two ideas of formal and dynamic, because there really is, there are no English translations that people in the pew are buying that are word for word or literal.
Speaker B:That kind of terminology is more technically designed to apply to what we call an interlinear Bible, where you have both the, you have the line of Hebrew from the, you know, from, you know, Genesis.
Speaker B:And then above each Hebrew word then is the direct English translation.
Speaker B:And so you get sentences that in English are all out of order.
Speaker B:And the same is true in the New Testament with the Greek, because Hebrew and Greek did not structure their written sentences in the same way that we speak or that we read in the English language.
Speaker B:And so a word for word translation, the farther you go on that formal side of the spectrum, the more wooden and rigid that the translation gets.
Speaker B:And kind of in, you know, tongue in cheek terms, it becomes more like Yoda speak than it does.
Speaker B:And then conversely, when you go to the dynamic or the thought for thought side of the spectrum, the translations that push out to that side of the spectrum, they get less accurate because they are looking to try to translate the thoughts of somebody from the Hebrew mind 2,000 years ago or from the Greek mind, you know, 2,000.
Speaker B:More than 2,000, 2,000 years ago.
Speaker B:You're trying to translate a phrase from another culture into a phrase of our culture.
Speaker B:And so you.
Speaker B:So this is where translation committees are trying to balance these two ideas of how.
Speaker B:How perfectly accurate can we be to the.
Speaker B:To the actual words from the original languages while being readable and understandable to the modern mind.
Speaker A:Yeah, yeah, It's.
Speaker A:I just.
Speaker A:When you made the differentiation, I thought, well, if I don't.
Speaker A:Don't take the opportunity to ask with the guy that's the expert.
Speaker A:It would be my loss.
Speaker A:So I thought I would.
Speaker A:I would.
Speaker A:I would jump in and ask.
Speaker A:There appears to be, I would say, a trend, and I see people coming on to.
Speaker A:Into the.
Speaker A:Into the missions and into the mission field, maybe with a decreasing biblical literacy.
Speaker A:Is that something you've noticed?
Speaker A:And how do you see that impacting the local church, this decreasing biblical literacy?
Speaker A:Maybe it's not a general theme, but it's something I've kind of picked up on.
Speaker B:Well, there, it feels to be that we're in this paradoxical moment, if I can put it that way, because there's been some.
Speaker B:Some.
Speaker B:There was a lot of.
Speaker B: ened at the very beginning of: Speaker B:And then here you have Bible sales that are just soaring.
Speaker B:So you have this real spike of the sale of the Bible.
Speaker B:But it doesn't feel like there's been an increase, as you say, of biblical literacy.
Speaker B:And so groups like the American Bible Society with their State of the Bible Report, or Arizona Christian University, that I've got an association and I do some work with them, with their center for Christian.
Speaker B:For their Christian Research Research center that George Barna leads, or there's several other organizations out there.
Speaker B:What we're seeing is that there is a slight uptick in Bible engagement with especially the younger generations, but there's not necessarily an increase in a biblical worldview.
Speaker B:We're losing ground on issues like the Trinity, which kind of foundational at this point, you know, and, and so I agree with you, and I think that professors at Christian universities and most pastors would agree that we are losing ground in terms of people's biblical literacy.
Speaker B:The culture as a whole is losing its cultural memory of biblical events.
Speaker B:And we as local church members and leaders need to dig back into the issues of discipleship.
Speaker B:I want everybody's attendance to grow, but I also want people who are attending churches to deepen in their understanding.
Speaker B:And so advocating for expository preaching for real Bible studies in small groups and not just social gatherings, I think is necessary.
Speaker B:Challenging student ministries to help their kids think through what does the Bible say rather than what feels good, what's the, the kind of.
Speaker B:The going norms.
Speaker B:But yeah, I agree with you that I think we have continued to slide in biblical literacy, but amazing stat.
Speaker A:I love that paradox.
Speaker A:You know, the Bible's selling, but it's.
Speaker A:And, you know, I think there is shifting and changing over time, and I think it's something we recognize, it's something we can, that we can, we can grow at.
Speaker A:And you know what?
Speaker A: applied to be missionaries in: Speaker A:And we had to take this Bible knowledge test.
Speaker A:You know, I'd been through Bible school.
Speaker A:I thought I knew, you know, oh, my lands.
Speaker A:It was questions, you know, it was like Bible trivia.
Speaker A:And I did, you know, I had read the Bible and it was, it was, it was an interesting, it was an interesting test for sure.
Speaker A:So, so, so what is the Open Bible?
Speaker A:And, and what is, what's your connection with it?
Speaker B:Yeah, so the, the Open Bible is an edition of scripture that Thomas Nelson.
Speaker B:We have published its anniversary edition this year.
Speaker B:And so 50 years ago, the Bible publishers, the guy who was in my seat all those years ago at Thomas Nelson kind of looked around and he saw that there was a gap in terms of the type of Bibles that were being offered 50 years ago.
Speaker B:There were not a lot of study Bibles that was not yet, as, you know, as full of a marketplace as we have today in terms of the number of study Bibles.
Speaker B:But one of the things that he had was what was called then the cyclopedic index, which was kind of the largest topical index that had ever been included in a Bible.
Speaker B:And now we actually call it the Nelson topical index.
Speaker B:And he had a set of cross references that help you to navigate where one idea in a verse shows up that same word or that same idea in other verses and other books.
Speaker B:And so they said, let's put together an edition of the Bible that will help the reader see that the best way to understand the Bible is that Scripture interprets scripture for us.
Speaker B:Now, that was not to cast aspersions against study notes.
Speaker B:We still publish lots of study Bibles that have got lots of theological study notes in them.
Speaker B:But it is a type of Bible so that a reader can pick it up and they can see how to navigate through the scriptures of how there are connecting ideas.
Speaker B:And then this big topical index, which is about 300 pages long, that any idea that you're looking for, whether it's faith or hope or mercy or some issue of temptation and sin that you're wrestling with, or a big idea like redemption, it gives you all of these reference points so that you can go and study where they are in scripture.
Speaker B:And I was given a copy of the Open Bible when I was 17 years old.
Speaker B:I had preached my very first sermon when I was 16.
Speaker B:There were a few pastors around my hometown of Birmingham that were going to let me preach as I was one of the new little preacher boys in town.
Speaker B:And an aunt and uncle gifted me a copy of the Open Bible.
Speaker B:I still have it up here on my shelf and I still use it.
Speaker B:And so I've had it all these years.
Speaker B:And it's just been a treasure trove for me to be able that whenever I was looking for that idea in scripture, that I could go to that index or I could search through the notes that are there or the timelines or the visual studies or the articles that are in the back on archaeology and how to live the Christian life.
Speaker B:So it's just this really great, accessible kind of study and reference Bible.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And yeah, it is quite complete and I think it is a great resource.
Speaker A:Any other tools that you found valuable and you can continue to focus on the Open Bible.
Speaker A:Any other tools or resources that you'd like to highlight?
Speaker B:Yeah, for me, one of the ones that we've been able to, that we did some editing to and did some additional source work is on.
Speaker B:There's an article in the back that is about all of the great archaeological finds over the last 50 years.
Speaker B:And so we updated it.
Speaker B:It had not been updated in about two decades.
Speaker B:And so we went to Scott Stripling, who's like the Indiana Jones, a biblical archaeologist.
Speaker B:I love this guy.
Speaker B:He is always over there digging in the dirt and always finding something new and wonderful and being able to access that article, which.
Speaker B:That article again, if I can Put it into context that the typical Christian living book that a person's going to pick up and read is going to likely be, you know, 37 to 45,000 words.
Speaker B:This article is about 15,000 words.
Speaker B:So it's about the third the size of a book.
Speaker B:And it's just chocked full of these little sections on all of these cities and artifacts and things that have been found that maybe for years historians would say, oh well that's in the Bible, but we really don't have a record of it.
Speaker B:Well, guess what joker, now we've got a record of it.
Speaker B:And so I just love that particular article and being able to just continuously see the proofs of everything that's in the scripture.
Speaker B:And then for me also, even though it's maybe it feels like it's the simplest part, the cross referencing system of the open Bible to be able to read in one.
Speaker B:I'm reading in one passage, but I see where each one of these verses gets referenced to another place in the Bible or the Messianic stars.
Speaker B:Many people have heard that there's over 300 prophecies for Jesus in the Old Testament.
Speaker B:Well, all of them are marked with a star in the margin of the open Bible.
Speaker B:And in the Old Testament all of the stars are open, meaning it's the outline of the star.
Speaker B:And then you jump over to the New Testament and where that prophecy gets fulfilled.
Speaker B:It's a colored instar.
Speaker B:So it's like you get to see the connections there.
Speaker B:So yeah, it's just all of these great little tools in this particular edition that we were glad to do this 50th anniversary edition of it in the.
Speaker A:Articles, are they all written by the same person or are the articles written by different scholars or how do those play out?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's different scholars that wrote them.
Speaker B:And so like I said, our friend Scott wrote the one on archeology.
Speaker B:And then Cass, she wrote an article about how to share your faith, about how to use the story of your own salvation in order to communicate that to someone else.
Speaker B:And then the different chain link notes about doctrinal issues and life application issues.
Speaker B:There were a team of writers 50 years ago who put all of those together and through the years they've been edited and updated so that they stay up to date with today's issues and to and how we live out our faith.
Speaker A:Good word, good word.
Speaker B:Yeah.
Speaker A:And so what are some of the reasons you mentioned earlier on that you your heart for the new King James version?
Speaker A:What's some of the reasons they published the Open Bible in the new King James?
Speaker B:Well, the Open Bible is the lead translation for us as at Nelson Bibles, since we had commissioned it and we steward it as part of the work that we do.
Speaker B:And the new King James feels like home to me.
Speaker B:Early on in childhood, I was in churches which were primarily King James Version, where the pastor, he would preach from that.
Speaker B:And that was the Bible that was in my home that my parents had.
Speaker B:And, and.
Speaker B:But then as the years roll on and the NKJV gets released, it becomes something that is a bit of a fixture as well in my life.
Speaker B:And reading the new King James, I tell people that it sounds like the Bible.
Speaker B:I know that that's kind of.
Speaker B:And that's not a slight at other translations, but there's a certain gravitas.
Speaker B:And where the scripture is supposed to be poetic, there's a lyrical nature to the way that it's translated.
Speaker B:There is, it does lean toward that more formal side.
Speaker B:So I feel like there is rigor to the accuracy, while maintaining the King James Version tradition, which I can dig into, of it being a translation that should be readable to the common man.
Speaker B:And the NKJV does this great job of balancing this idea that this is a modern translation with modern vocabulary that maintains this really accurate read of the original languages.
Speaker A:Wow.
Speaker A:And that's.
Speaker A:That was when I was going to ask if somebody's new to the new King James.
Speaker A:You're saying it is readable and it, you know, it is accurate.
Speaker A:I, you know, I grew up reading probably American Standard, but then the King James.
Speaker A:And at times, you know, it was not the language I spoke in the day, so.
Speaker A:But it was easier memorize.
Speaker A:I found that King James and New King James easier to memorize, I think because of the, it was the lyrical nature of it or the, the, the wording of it.
Speaker A:It was, it was easier for me to memorize and put together.
Speaker A:Yeah.
Speaker A:So you mentioned some of the history.
Speaker A:Do you want to share about that?
Speaker B:Yeah, it's really.
Speaker B:I, I find it to be so fascinating.
Speaker B:But of course I would because I'm a nerdy Bible publisher.
Speaker B:But I.
Speaker B:Here's what I would encourage your listeners to do before I delve into this is every one of your Bibles likely has a preface before Genesis.
Speaker B:You're going to get the title page, the copyright page.
Speaker B:Somewhere in that front matter, there's a preface that the translation committee put together about the translation that you're reading, and I would encourage you to go and read it.
Speaker B:And the history really does date back to the King James Version.
Speaker B:And I have a book that was.
Speaker B:It's a really short book written by a young man, Joshua Barzin, called the Forgotten Preface.
Speaker B:And it's about the preface of the King James Version Bible.
Speaker B:Because we read the King James Version, we go, oh, my goodness, this is Shakespearean English.
Speaker B:This is from another generation.
Speaker B:Which is all correct.
Speaker B:It's from a couple of centuries ago.
Speaker B:And so it's a foreign dialect at places.
Speaker B:But when you read the preface, and this is where I would say the NKJV does this.
Speaker B:I would say all of the major translations of our day do the same, is that the translators of the KJV in their preface talk about how they wanted to create a mean translation.
Speaker B:Now, again, you move a couple of centuries and that word mean has changed its meanings.
Speaker A:Right.
Speaker B:And what they meant is a translation for the common man.
Speaker B:It was something that would be, this is the language that everybody used.
Speaker B:We think of it as this very difficult language.
Speaker B: But back in: Speaker B:This was the language of the common person.
Speaker B:And so every generation, every time we've done a translation, it has been for the purposes of how do we translate the original text of Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek into the language of the people that are right here in front of us?
Speaker B:And whether that is the missionary translation work that is being done around the world or whether that's here on our continent of the United States, in the United States of America for English readers.
Speaker B:And that's the beauty of the history of Bible translation, is not that people are trying to translate it into a language that is so formal that you've got to have a degree to understand it, but that it's translated for the common person to be able to engage the eternal word of God.
Speaker A:Excellent, Philip, it's been awesome to have you on today.
Speaker A:Anything, any questions?
Speaker A:I should have asked you if you're thinking, Aaron, if you're a really good podcast host, you would have asked me this, but I forgot I didn't ask.
Speaker A:Or you think I should have asked?
Speaker B:Well, I would just encourage people, if you're interested, to find out more about the Bibles that we're trying to produce, that we think that our goal is to create beautiful Bibles for every age and stage of life.
Speaker B:Just go to thomasnelsonbibles.com, the Open Bible.
Speaker B:You can find that there.
Speaker B:You can find all the other kind of study and devotional and journal Bibles and That's the key.
Speaker B:I say that is the key.
Speaker B:It is a key that I want to encourage your listeners is that there is a Bible edition that you're going to find that maybe is going to be more engaging than others, and that's okay.
Speaker B:Maybe it's a journaling Bible.
Speaker B:It's got wide margins so you can make all kind of notes.
Speaker B:Maybe it's a really nice, expensive goatskin premium Bible because you feel like it's a sacred thing.
Speaker B:You need it to be in the.
Speaker B:In the nicest form possible.
Speaker B:Maybe it's a little portable Bible that's a compact Bible that you can throw in your backpack that has a zipper on it so it'll protect the page edges.
Speaker B:Whatever it is, go find that Bible that you will find most easily to read and most readily available to read.
Speaker B:That's really what I want.
Speaker B:I mean, do I want my company to make money?
Speaker B:Sure, we're a for profit company.
Speaker B:I want to be responsible to my shareholders.
Speaker B:But do I really, really, really want people to get a Bible that they'll engage with on a daily basis?
Speaker B:That's what I'm living for.
Speaker B:That's what we want for you is just to find that copy of scripture that you will find yourself constantly in.
Speaker B:So I hope that that's the end result of all of this.
Speaker A:Awesome.
Speaker A:Philip, it's been awesome to have you on with us today and your passion and love for God's word and for Scripture is evident.
Speaker A:And it's been a joy and honor to learn from you today.
Speaker A:Will you pray for us as we close out the podcast?
Speaker B:I'll be glad to, Aaron.
Speaker B:Thanks so much, Father.
Speaker B:We are happy to come before you knowing that you don't have any rivals or equals on the earth or under the earth, or above the earth, that you alone are God, and that you are good and merciful and kind to us.
Speaker B:And I pray that you would help every person who listens to this conversation Conversation.
Speaker B:To have their curiosity piqued about parts of the scripture that maybe they don't know yet, but that you are waiting to meet them in.
Speaker B:Father, I pray that you would illumine our hearts by the presence of the Holy Spirit.
Speaker B:That you would empower us to live for Christ, that we would live by the joy of your salvation that was purchased by Christ on the cross in our place for our sins and that we can experience the power of the resurrection.
Speaker B:Lord, help us to grow in our hunger and our thirst for your heavenly wisdom that is found in God's word.
Speaker B:God, we thank you that you've been so gracious to us.
Speaker B:We pray this in Jesus name.
Speaker B:Amen.
Speaker A:Amen.
