An invitation to unite in one conviction: Scripture is the Word of God, and he has authorized his people to use, copy, distribute, and adapt it regardless of man’s consent. Read the statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/12DwWu4BZpAu-Ys0Pbg0jDrK7tthzVZFEfaxpZOWEA1c/edit?usp=sharingSend feedback: https://forms.gle/67jLjk6xecJP4QMU7https://www.doreancon.org/#doreancon 2025The Stewardship of ScriptureOctober 7-8Hosted at Silicon Valley Reformed Baptist Church, Sunnyvale, California ...
Jun 14, 2025•8 min
The Solid Rock Hebrew Bible represents a significant step forward in the ongoing effort to recover the most accurate possible form of the biblical text. Unlike many standard editions in circulation today—which are largely based on a single medieval manuscript—this volume offers an eclectic Hebrew text informed by the insights of modern textual criticism. The goal: to move closer to the original wording of the Scriptures as they were first composed. This edition moves beyond the limitations of di...
May 23, 2025•45 min
What if Mother Teresa or Billy Graham lived and worked — and nobody knew their names? What if one of the church’s most influential missionaries went almost unnoticed? Meet Katharine (Katy) Barnwell. Within Bible translation, she’s a legend. Outside of Bible translation, few have heard of her. But not even Billy Graham holds a candle to what God did through Katy . From hiding as a child from Nazi bombing raids, fleeing civil wars, and remaining calm under terrorist attacks and armed gunmen, to ut...
Apr 29, 2025•42 min
In this episode, we dive into the captivating and complex history of Bible translation in Thailand. Our guest, Doug Liao, has spent a lot of time studying the history of Bible translation into Thai, and helps introduce us to the pioneers who brought the Scriptures to this unique cultural landscape. In this lesson from history we'll be reminded of how messy and controversial Bible translation can be, in spite of the best intentions. Doug Liao is a PhD Candidate at Fuller Seminary, studying the hi...
Apr 05, 2025•42 min
After hearing the panel discussion on AI a couple episodes back, some of you may be wondering what exactly it might look like for you to explore using AI for your translation project. I myself was curious as well. So I reached out to James, who led the panel discussion, and he connected me to Jeff Webster with Seed Company who has a good deal of experience helping teams evaluate and use AI for drafting. After sharing a little about himself, Jeff will walk us through the details of what would be ...
Mar 06, 2025•50 min
Read the article. One of the common misconceptions about the King James Version (KJV) of the Bible is that it is a universally public domain work—something many tout as a feature of its superiority to modern copyrighted translations. But most don’t realize that it is still under a special perpetual copyright of the Crown in the United Kingdom . Unlike the KJV, some modern translations such as the Berean Standard Bible are public domain worldwide . So while it’s important for a Bible translati...
Feb 15, 2025•7 min
As AI gains more and more momentum, I believe that Christians should be compelled to think biblically and carefully about the technology. Are there redemptive uses for it, and what are the dangers? Is it all a doomsday scenario, or are there ways in which it can be used for God’s glory in a responsible way that promotes human flourishing and the spread of the gospel and the edification of the Church? In this episode I want to share two things I came across recently that I hope will aid us in cul...
Jan 18, 2025•1 hr 22 min
The Spoken English Bible is a new translation of the Bible that is intended to be heard and told, not read. It is being produced from the original languages and is intended to maximize retention while still being faithful to the meaning. The SEB is owned and produced by SIL International, and is licensed under the open CC BY-SA license. In this episode I’m joined by Josh Frost who is a member of the SEB team and will be giving us an insider’s perspective on the process and development of this ne...
Dec 17, 2024•1 hr 16 min
Links: Global Bible Tools Intro How to Self-Publish a Free Book That Is Truly Freely Given Video version of the psalm at the end of the episode The Dark Side of Copyright website | books | twitter | music | Hebrew | articles | facebook | ...
Nov 16, 2024•15 min
It’s an incredible time to be alive, especially getting to watch the advances of AI in various fields. While I realize that there’s probably a sizeable percentage of this audience that thinks AI is the opposite of progress, I want to introduce you to a tool that you might find useful. It’s called NotebookLM by Google , and it’s free for you to start using today. You can create notebooks and fill them with source material of all kinds: links, videos, PDFs, pasted text, and other docs. The AI will...
Oct 04, 2024•31 min
I co-wrote this article with Conley Owens for sellingJesus.org . It was originally published on the Selling Jesus podcast. "For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ" (2 Cor. 2:17, ESV). This highly technical discussion is not an easy listen, and it's recommended that you complement it with the visuals in the written version of the article. That said, the primary source of interest in this verse i...
Sep 12, 2024•23 min
An important decision a translator makes is whether or not to domesticate/contextualize/localize the foreign elements of a text. In this episode, we will discuss the concepts of domestication and foreignization in Bible translation, and explore some of the factors that translators should consider when making this decision. As we’ll see, foreignness in translation demands a delicate balance between fidelity to the source text and accessibility to the target audience. Here's the full text of the a...
Aug 19, 2024•40 min
The other day I ran across a fascinating article written by a Cambridge PhD student who memorized the entire book of Job in Hebrew as part of her dissertation research. The article was entitled Learning to love: The surprising joy of memorising Job , and after reading it I knew I wanted to learn more about the process and the insights she gleaned from the experience. So I reached out to her and she kindly agreed to grace us with a nerdy chat on Job. Ellie Wiener particularly takes joy in studyin...
Jul 08, 2024•59 min
"Accuracy is often thought to be the main criterion for good translation, but acceptability is just as important." Drew Maust is a translation consultant and one of the editors of the SIL Journal of Translation. He kindly agreed to read and share a recent article of his on this podcast. A big thanks to Drew for taking the time to record his insights for us to learn from! Despite the objective advantages of the metric system—such as its simplicity and global adoption—Americans are reluctant to ab...
Jun 28, 2024•23 min
In this episode we have the pleasure of talking to biblical scholar Dr. Drew Longacre. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Birmingham and has recently been a researcher at Cambridge Digital Bible Research on the Psalms: Layer by Layer project, which we did an episode on in the past. From 2016–2021, he was the postdoctoral researcher on the a project called “The Hands that Wrote the Bible: Digital Palaeography and Scribal Culture of the Dead Sea Scrolls”, where he applied the latest advances ...
Jun 20, 2024•51 min
View the newsletter tips.translation.bible Video Bible Dictionary workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academic articles | facebook | contact | download all episodes for offline...
Jun 15, 2024•8 min
Bitcoin represents a transformative tool for missionaries, offering a secure, transparent, and ethical alternative to traditional financial systems. By embracing Bitcoin, missionaries can protect themselves and those they serve from economic instability and corruption. Moreover, Bitcoin’s alignment with biblical principles of fairness and justice makes it a fitting choice for those committed to upholding these values in their work. This single episode is not meant to convince you to invest in Bi...
Jun 07, 2024•24 min
Am I dogmatic about using "Yahweh" as opposed to other pronunciations? What about Yehovah? How do we end up with the pronunciation of "Yahweh" anyway? Doesn't the Septuagint provide conclusive evidence for how to pronounce the divine name? These are some closing thoughts and loose ends I wanted to address. Read the book . workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | academi...
Jun 04, 2024•10 min
The previous episodes in this series considered God’s desire for us to use his name , how the pronunciation was lost , and how the New Testament writers handled the matter . It remains, finally, to consider how it has been handled by translators since the Reformation. In that time there have been various departures from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate, which rendered the divine name as Dominus (“Lord/Master”), while others have maintained the tradition, which goes back to the Septuagint. Read the article...
Jun 01, 2024•9 min
We know that the inhibition for pronouncing God’s name came before Christianity, although we don’t know how widespread it was. It’s possible that rendering the divine name as “Lord” ( kurios ) had already been a strong tradition for centuries by the time we get to Jesus and the apostles. What’s clear is that the New Testament manuscripts we have all follow the tradition that the Septuagint set, which was to substitute the title “Lord” ( kurios ) for God’s name (YHWH). So, the fact that the New T...
May 25, 2024•11 min
This is part 2 of a short series on the divine name. It’s important to recognize right up front that we simply do not know with absolute certainty how God’s name was originally pronounced. The common English pronunciation of “Yahweh” is an educated guess, but we’ll never know for sure how it sounded when God spoke it to Moses. Two key things prevent us from knowing: (1) Hebrew was written without vowels for many centuries, so we’re left with only four consonants: YHWH, and (2) people started avo...
May 16, 2024•11 min
A few years ago I did a series on the pronunciation and translation of the divine name here on this podcast. It was a long series that eventually turned into a book . Now, a while back the Text and Canon Institute asked me to do a four-part series on the divine name for their website, which forced me to significantly condense the highlights of the book into smaller, less technical articles. So as a service to anyone who may not have the time to read them, or who may not have the time to listen t...
May 10, 2024•12 min
Back in 2021 I had Dave Brunn on this podcast to talk about his amazing book One Bible, Many Versions . If you haven’t heard parts 1 and 2 of that interview, I highly recommend going back to listen when you finish this episode. Dave recently published an article titled Gender in Bible Translation: A Crucial Issue Still Mired in Misunderstanding . It would be an understatement to say that this is an important article for the Church, particularly English-speaking evangelicals. So when I saw his ar...
May 03, 2024•59 min
This is the second in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new semantic dictionary of biblical Hebrew . Learn more about Dr. Reinier de Blois in the previous epis...
Apr 27, 2024•46 min
This is the first in a two part series that aims to introduce you to the work of Dr. Reinier de Blois and honor some of the incredible labor of love he has poured out for the sake of the Bible translation community and movement. Specifically, I want to highlight his work in Hebrew lexicography as he nears the end of a project that has spanned over two decades; and that is the creation of a new semantic dictionary of biblical Hebrew , which is available under an open creative commons license. Thi...
Apr 20, 2024•41 min
This is an episode about consulting, specifically addressing some challenges involved with the current consulting model, and possibly some ways it could improve. It also covers some difficulties that may arise when mentoring a consultant in training (CIT) or being mentored as a CIT. Recently I supervised a CIT doing practice checking, and I want to share some lessons learned from that experience. workingfortheword.com | my books | twitter | music | Hebrew | ac...
Apr 14, 2024•28 min
I want to introduce you to an initiative called Global Bible Tools , which aims to provide the global Church with access to the same advanced biblical language tools that the West enjoys. This includes lexicons, grammars, and text critical information. In this podcast we'll discuss the importance of these tools for serious study of the Bible and Bible translation, and propose a way to make them more accessible to the majority world. Contact me at andrewdcase@gmail.com . workingfortheword.com |...
Apr 03, 2024•16 min
In my vast array of interactions with intelligent people working in Bible translation, I have learned something: most approach the issue of copyright out of complete ignorance, and sometimes with a great deal of pride and irrationality. I used to be one of those people. So I'm doing my best to share what I've learned. "For nearly a century, copyright legislation has been subtly but effectively applied, misused and abused in regard to the Word of God in order to chain the Bible to a new pulpit, d...
Feb 21, 2024•1 hr 9 min
"For the people by the people." That is the slogan of The Word for the World , which is a Bible translation org that we’re going to be learning about in this episode. They exist to equip language groups for mother tongue translation and literacy development. Since 1981, they have been working towards this goal through translation, training, literacy, and partnerships with like-minded organizations. Their prayer is that every person will know that God loves them and speaks their language! Our gue...
Dec 14, 2023•26 min
As I said in the last episode, I’ve been working on the Selling Jesus project , which is now well underway with a ton of content. Please check out the website sellingJesus.org and you’ll find enough reading material to keep you busy all Christmas vacation. Also, it would mean the world to me if you would help boost the views of the first Selling Jesus video on YouTube , which is on the homepage of sellingJesus.org, and share it around. I’ll be releasing the next long video in the series soon, so...
Dec 02, 2023•34 min
