Woohoo! After a whole ton of work, I’ve finally translated the first part of 2 Peter 1! Actually, I didn’t do the real translating-into-English work — I’m standing on the shoulders of Bauckham, Hiebert and JND Kelly (#1, #3 & #5 on Rosscup’s list), who did way more work than I. However, I did my best at translating their in-depth understanding of the original greek into modern vocabulary and writing style.
Here it is: 2 Peter 1a (PDF).
FYI: As some of my close friends are skeptical of the value and validity of this project, I’ll be presenting their concerns and discussing them (with them and with all of you) over the next few weeks. I care a lot about this because translations are the primary tool we non-scholars use to interact with God’s Holy Word.
FYI 2: I’ll also be posting more details behind the word choices made here.
I still think there is some writing style that’s not as smooth as it could be and some words that are more technical/academic than they have to be: Do you have suggestions on how to make this more readable or cohesive without losing anything?
Hey Peter,
This PDF is sideways… it’s not too difficult to fix it, but keep that in mind as you post future files.
Thanks, Gabe!
I haven’t figured out how to create PDFs so they automatically view in Landscape mode. This is a annoying since most of my PDFs are landscape. Thanks for the prod, I’ll dig a little deeper – it shouldn’t be too hard to fix.
What do you use to make PDF’s? CutePDF is a good free one I recently discovered.
Sorry… when I said “it’s not too difficult…” I meant on our side.
Hey Peter,
Your “whole ton of work” paid off. Your talk on Monday was awesome! God bless,
Wow, thanks Hayley Ann!
I’m still not fully satisfied with the translation, but I LOVE what Peter’s saying — I’m glad it came across in the talk on Monday. Now the real trick (just as hard for me as for everyone else) is to live it.