Tyndale House

May News from Tyndale House

Dear friends,

At Tyndale House we are passionate about supporting evangelical biblical scholars, and ensuring that Christians across the world benefit from their work. In this newsletter you can see some of the ways in which Tyndale House makes it possible for Bible researchers to serve the global Church with vital resources, whether they’re based in Brazil or Texas, Romania or San Francisco.

However, none of this would be possible without our global network of supporters and readers. Projects such as STEPBible, which puts powerful research tools in the hands of scholars in the Majority World, relies on a committed team of volunteers giving their time and expertise. Our ability to host international scholars working on publications for parts of the world where resources are scarce, relies on the committed financial giving of our supporters. In everything we do we are dependent on the generosity and prayers of people like you.

So whether you volunteer with us, give financially to us, pray for us, or tell others about our library and resources — thank you for being part of what makes Tyndale House unique.

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Jonas Madureira, Professor of Philosophy at Mackenzie Presbyterian University in São Paulo, Brazil, presents a gift to Tyndale House Operations Vice Principal Simon Sykes

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Dr Peter J Williams speaking with students at Houston Baptist University on a recent trip to the US

TYNDALE HOUSE OLD TESTAMENT  CONFERENCE 2019

Exploring the Old Testament and its World

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 22 June 2019, Christ Church, Cambridge  

Join us in Cambridge for a day of teaching from Tyndale House researchers, open to anyone with an interest in the Bible, no academic experience or qualifications are necessary.

Programme:

10:00-10:15 Arrival and registration

10:15-10:30 Welcome

10:30-11:15 Session One - Dr Caleb Howard

The Siege of Jerusalem: watching a Biblical event through the eyes of Israel’s enemies

In 701 BC Sennacherib, king of Assyria, laid siege to Jerusalem in a significant standoff that was recorded in both biblical and Assyrian texts. The survival of some of these Assyrian sources provides a fascinating comparison with records of the event that appear in the Bible. This session looks at literary and historiographic features of the writings and asks if a consistent story emerges.

11:15-11:45 Coffee

11:45-12:30 Session Two - Dr Kim Phillips

Letter by letter: how the scribes preserved the text of the Old Testament

“Not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen will by any means disappear from the Law...” This session demonstrates that Jewish scribes preserved the Old Testament text, letter by letter, with extraordinary accuracy from well before the time of Jesus to the end of the Middle Ages, and explores some of the means by which they achieved this astonishing feat.

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:15 Session Three - Dr Elizabeth Robar

A living language: tracking Old Testament Hebrew through time and space

Just as the English we speak today is much changed from the Old English of Beowulf, so biblical Hebrew changed over the hundreds of years between the first book of the Old Testament and the last. This session examines these layers of language and how they point to the historical depth of the Old Testament documents.

14:15-14:45 Coffee

14:45-15:30 Session Four - Dr Peter J Williams

Moral depth: a modern reader’s guide to Old Testament narratives

How are we to understand the actions reported in Old Testament narratives? The texts themselves have little explicit guidance, but rich allusions to other parts of Scripture help to reveal their moral depth. This session will look at profound lessons for modern readers to be found in passages from Joshua to 2 Kings.

15:30-16:45 Questions for the academic panel

16:15 Close

16:45-18:15 Optional Guided University Walk with Christian Heritage

Meet the speakers

Dr Elizabeth Robar - Tyndale House Research Associate 

Elizabeth has loved languages ever since she first discovered she could teach herself Latin from her mother’s college textbook.

Elizabeth’s current research interests include the Semitic languages, Biblical Greek, linguistics, syntax and everything that flows out from these: literary studies, grammar, exegesis, and how best to transmit what knowledge we have to the next generation.

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Optional Guided University Walk

We've teamed up with the Round Church Visitor's Centre to offer conference attendees the opportunity to take part in a guided walk of Cambridge at the end of the day.

Join a Round Church Guide to explore developments in theology, science, education and social reform which reveal how Christianity has shaped Cambridge University for good and given direction to the pursuit of knowledge over eight centuries.

Tickets are £6 from the conference website >

Success in project to revise Romanian New Testament 

Tyndale House reader Dr Emanuel Contac celebrates successful printing of a new translation of the Bible in Romanian.

The Cornilescu translation of the Bible, first published in 1921, remains to this day the most popular version among Romanian evangelicals. Although it aged well, the version needed a revision, so in 2015 the British and Foreign Bible Society, together with its Romanian partner, the Interconfessional Romanian Bible Society, commissioned a panel of nine Romanian scholars to carefully revise the text.

The supervision of this project was entrusted to Dr Emanuel Contac, who teaches full time at the Pentecostal Theological Institute of Bucharest. During the past two years, Dr Contac has stayed at Tyndale House, making use of the library to review the Pauline epistles, and to check revisions to the text of the Gospels which were being made by his colleagues.

The new Romanian New Testament was printed in mid-April and is now being distributed.

The OT text is still a work in progress: most books have been revised at least once, but a second revision is still necessary in order to make sure that the text is not only faithful to the original, but also accessible for modern readers.

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The first 800 copies of the New Testament text. The demand has far exceeded the team's estimate. 

STEP Bible Summit  

STEP Bible is an ambitious, time-consuming and passion-driven project — yet many of the people who work on it never meet in person.

Across the world, a dedicated group of volunteers commit their time and energy to refine software that allows users to access the Bible in Old Testament Hebrew or New Testament Greek, even if they have no prior knowledge of Bible languages. However, since the majority of the work is done remotely, despite having worked together for years, many of the programmers had never met.

In the last week of March, there was a rare opportunity for the STEP Bible volunteers to talk face-to-face with each other and with the project leader, Dr David Instone-Brewer.

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STEP Bible volunteers, Jamie Critos from the UK and Peter Tang from San Francisco, were introduced to the Tyndale House community. The team met together to make plans for work on STEP Bible's Hebrew morphology and adding new languages.

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Read more about STEP Bible in Issue 2 of ink magazine >

Against the idol of academic perfectionism

Tyndale House reader Flavien Pardigon publishes 'Paul Against the Idols: A Contextual Reading of the Areopagus Speech'. 

Flavien and his family have been part of the community at Tyndale House since 2013. They work with local church leaders in various locations across the Majority World.

Paul Against the Idols studies the story of Paul’s visit to the city of Athens recorded in the Acts of the Apostles. Reading Paul's speech delivered before the Areopagus council in its theological, intertextual, narrative, linguistic, and historical context, and suggesting ways in which it can contribute to a Christian theology of religions and missiology.

In his preface, Flavien writes, "There are no words to express the immense privilege it was to be part of the community at Tyndale House in Cambridge for the past four years.

"Of course the library holdings are remarkable (and effectively complemented by the various university libraries). I am convinced, however, that the most profitable contribution that Tyndale makes to its guests' scholarship is found in the innumerable conversations pursued over coffee or lunch.

"Thank you to the too-many-to-be-named readers who have listened, encouraged, challenged, stretched, corrected, taught, sharpened, and shaped me, and who have pushed me to always do better while warning me regularly against the temptation and idol of academic perfectionism."

Please pray for the Pardigon family, that God would keep them faithful and would bless his Church worldwide through their labours and the book's publication.

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Become a Tyndale House supporter 

At Tyndale House we believe the best possible information about the Bible should be available to the widest possible number of people.

That's why we conduct rigorous research and offer our findings accessibly to everyone who wants to improve their Bible literacy.

We are funded almost entirely by private donors like you, who invest in Bible understanding and equipping the Church worldwide.

Will you consider joining our global network of supporters by giving just £5 a month to help us continue this work?

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If you have any questions, or if you're planning a visit to Tyndale House, we'd love to hear from you!

Email us: communications@tyndalehouse.com