Saturday, February 17, 2007

ANOTHER METZGER OBITUARY: a brief one from the UPI.

UPDATE: And another, longer one from the LA Times:
Bruce Manning Metzger, 93; New Testament scholar helped edit, update Bible translations
By Mary Rourke, Times Staff Writer
February 16, 2007

Bruce Manning Metzger, a New Testament scholar and biblical translator who helped to edit several modern translations of the Bible, died Tuesday at the University Medical Center at Princeton, N.J. He was 93.

The cause was respiratory failure, his son John said Thursday.

Starting in the mid-1970s, Metzger served as chairman of a committee of about.Bible that is now used in a number of seminaries and schools of theology.

The translation, published in 1990, eliminated such archaic words as "thee" and "thou" and adjusted references to "man" where both men and women were indicated. The result was closer to current English usage than the older Revised Standard Version of the Bible, published in 1952.

[...]

Some of the adjustments aimed at preventing confusion with popular slang.

A line in Psalm 50 was changed from "I will accept no bull from your house" to "I will not accept a bull from your house."

Another line, in the second letter of Paul to the Corinthians, previously read, "Once I was stoned." Metzger's committee changed it to "Once I received a stoning."

Metzger's knowledge of ancient languages, including Ethiopic, Coptic and Aramaic as well as Greek and Hebrew, all of which are used in scripture studies, made him particularly valuable to the committee.

[...]

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