Job, Poetry & Coronavirus
If Leviticus is the deathbed of many a read-the-Bible-in-a-year resolutions, I reckon Job is generally just ignored or never reached, which is both a pity and quite understandable. Happening to read it in the last month or so with my 11-year old daughter Rebekah, I’ve really been struck, however, by its relevance as wisdom for …
April 16: House Move!
In Brief In Glasgow: We’re GO for completing buying our new flat moving in from tomorrow, Friday! The UK’s been in lockdown for about 3 weeks or so. We switched a little into home school mode before Easter, but having a garden would be nice. One of Julie’s elderly relatives (Ethel) is sick with Covid-19. …
Spiritual Beings
My smart friend and colleague Ben Kuwitzky quotes from Martin Luther: “If God had wanted me to die thinking I was a clever fellow, he would not have got me into the business of translating the Bible.” …and even more so when you’re working outside your own culture. I was reminded of one of my …
Mercy seat or atoning sacrifice?
One of the newest English language Bible translations has got an update. It’s not radical. About the only remarkable change they highlight is switching the translation in Romans 3:25 from the key term atoning sacrifice to mercy seat. As a committee we adopted “mercy seat” for a number of reasons, but we recognize that “propitiation” …
Extra UK stats on Coronavirus
I know it’s bad to obsess about statistics for live issues – whether election results or pandemics – but whilst recognising there are individual people and tragedies behind every number I have to admit it has been fascinating to look at stats on worldometers.info and gov.uk and Nigerian Centre for Disease Control. One thing is …
Covid-19: Coping with lockdown
Just as we were expecting to be packing up to head to Nigeria, the world went crazy with this Covid-19 Coronavirus virus and Nigeria very sensibly shut down all its international airports. We had already received advice from Wycliffe Bible Translators to stay where we were, so we’re here in the UK a bit longer. …
Obligatory Covid-19 update
Just as things were coming together for us to head back to Nigeria (about a month later than we had hoped), things have got a little lively and unpredictable with this troubling Coronavirus/Covid-19. Airlines are still flying to Nigeria, but it’s possible in a month they won’t be. So it’s looking increasingly likely we may …
Ishɛ translation update: I’m a wondering about ‘amma’…
Years ago when starting work with the Koro Ashɛ translation team (whose language is called Ishɛ) the translators asked me about an issue they had. There were too many Hausa words in it. In particular the word ‘amma‘. It’s a common conjunction rather like English ‘but‘ and you do actually hear it frequently in conversation. …
Rowbory family & ministry update 2019
Merry Christmas, everyone! We’re enjoying being around friends and family in the UK for Christmas for the first time in 4 years, but missing our friends and co-workers in Nigeria. We have now been in the UK for nearly 6 months, and had various plans for our time here which haven’t exactly worked out, but …