This is Ben, and this is Keith.

And this is main street Lutherans. And today we're going to be talking about the Bible. But before that, we're going to talk a little bit about our own podcast.

Yeah, switch things up a little bit today. So just let everybody know. We're so happy that you're listening. The audience is growing, and that's all thanks to you. We're not doing a whole lot for promoting it. Aside from sharing it a few places. I think it's safe to say that we are the most listened to podcast about the ELCa on the Internet.

Keith, way to boast. Let me tell you, that is field of competition.

Maybe because of us, maybe we won't be the only one in a couple months or so. But we'll see.

We'll be out of business because anybody else that tries this job is going to do a better job than we are.

Probably. But we want to hear from you. So we've talked about our email, our messages on social media. I am opening up a phone line from the production company that I have that does several podcasts. You can call us now on that phone number. It's 734-250-9554 we'll have that listed, of course, in the episode notes. No one's going to answer that phone. You can just leave a message and leave your answer to the catechism question. You can suggest topics, tell us what we're doing wrong or that you're going to make a better podcast than us. We're happy to hear it. Also, tell us where you're listening from. We want to know where everybody's at and what you want to hear more about. And, you know, we'd really like to know what you like about your church. What is it that makes your church special? What is it that gets you coming back and fills your fuel tank for the next week? If you do that and you leave a message on the telephone line, you might just get on the show. We have the technology to do that. In addition, coming up here, just actually, this will launch on May 12. So this coming week, we're going to be in Pittsburgh at the Festival of Homiletics. If you're going, tickets are already sold out. So if you want to meet us, or if there's somebody you want to hear from that is there, let us know and we will try to get in touch with them. Or we'll put up a flag and you can try to find us. We don't run too fast.

You can probably still purchase online access for the festival, but you won't be able to.

That's true. That's true. You can view it from anywhere. But if you're hoping to get there, well, you never know what happens when you just show up. But we're not encouraging that necessarily. All right, so our segment on the Bible, let's talk about what is the Bible?

Yeah, so, you know, the Bible is a lot of things to a lot of people. It is certainly, you know, it is our holy book. As christians of the lutheran persuasion, it.

Often says that on the COVID It does. It says holy Bible.

Bible. Yeah. Or as we often refer to it as at camp when we were counselors. The Holly Bibble. Yeah.

Yeah.

So, you know, there's, there is so much to the Bible. It is a collection of various kinds of works in the way that we as Lutherans count it. There are 66 books in the Bible, 39 in the Old Testament, 27 in the New. There's also the apocrypha. We'll talk about that in a little bit. These books, many of them are not monoliths of any one particular writing style. There's stories, there's poetry, there's history, there's theology, there's politics, there's chronicles of rulers and wars, there's genealogies. But first and foremost, the Bible is not any of those things by itself. It's not a book of stories or poetry or history or theology. It's a book about God. And that's what we as Lutherans want to keep in the foreground for us, that the story of the Bible as a whole is really not about us. It's about God. Now, at the same time, you know, we do believe that the Bible was written by people. We believe that it was inspired by God, but it's written by people who have their own contexts, their own people.

Who disagree with each other.

I know there's even, like, you know, take the creation story in Genesis, for example. There's different versions of the same story, and sometimes they jive pretty well and sometimes they don't. There's one version of Goliath in which he's like 9ft tall, and there's another where I think he's twelve and he has six fingers on each hand.

Because.

There are different traditions about with some of the same stories that have been brought together by editors. So we believe that the Bible is inspired by God, but it's written by people who, again, have their own settings, their own agendas, their own limitations, and then other people that have come along and drawn those various strands together. And sometimes those strands conflict with each other, and the editors don't seem to care much. So that's the Bible. Now, what isn't the Bible for us as Lutherans?

Well, it's definitely not. Like we said, it's not written by a single person or a single group of people. It's not written by people that have the same theology, even different parts of the Bible. You'll hear Bible scholars talk about the priestly writings and, you know, different perspectives on these things. And we have four gospels, and all four of those gospels disagree on things. You know, the gospels aren't written by the same person. In fact, the epistles that we attribute to Paul when we're kids, we even know that they weren't written all by Paul either. So there's a lot to go in there. Yeah. So the Bible isn't some unitary sort of source on this. There's a lot of thinking that we need to do to decide what each piece of it means.

You know, it's interesting you mentioned that word gospel, too, because this is a weird concept, and even as I'm saying it out loud, I'm probably not going to phrase this correctly, especially not for anything that I would want to be putting my stamp on as a lutheran pastor. But we're recording this and I'm going to do it anyway. So the Bible is not the be all, end all, greatest revelation that we have from God, which I think would be a contradiction in some other traditions. For us, though, the greatest revelation we have from God is the gospel, which is the story of Jesus. And interestingly, we get that story from the Bible. But the gospel, the message about Jesus, rather than the gospel books, Matthew, Martin, Luther and John, the message about Jesus is so big, it is not wholly contained in the Bible. It is a revelation that is too big to be held there. And so the traditions of the church, our history, our interpretation of scripture, our understanding of who Jesus is, it's constantly growing and shifting, and I almost hesitate to use the word evolving, but there I did. Yeah. And it is a conundrum to think about the fact that the story about Jesus that we read in the Bible is bigger than the story about Jesus that we read in the Bible. But it is. So the greatest revelation we have from God is the gospel, is the story of the message of Jesus.

I think it would be better to say that the gospel is Jesus, that God's message is Jesus himself, and what we have in writings about him are not the entirety of Jesus. Yeah, I think that's a more clear way of doing it, the word gospel gets used in two or three levels and sort of mucks up the water a little bit. So.

Sure. No, I think that's, I think that's good. But, yeah, that, that story is bigger than what we read in the book.

Yeah. But speaking of mucking up the waters, we've got this thing with translations. Right. Because I don't think the Bible as it was written by the Hebrews and, and by various folks in history was written in English.

Well, Jesus read the King James Bible. Right.

I'm sure he obviously didn't, at least not while he was alive on earth.

Right. So what's the thing going around about translations?

Yeah, there's, there's this thing about that's been shared here recently. It turns out this was, this was written somewhere around 2018 by a guy named Bob Edwards. And he does a comparison between two different versions of the Bible. One of them is, is the common English Bible, which was published initially in 2011. It's a translation that's sponsored by many of the publishing houses of mainline denominations, notably not the ELCA. And that in the translation, attempts to use gender neutral or gender affirming language is one of the efforts. And this is particular to what he says in his thing. That's why it's important. The other version that he talks about is the ESV or the English standard Version. And that is a translation that came out in 2001. And it is generally written from an evangelical base. So they're trying to be literalist in their translation. And the effect of that is they use male dominant language in the Bible. And so Bob Edwards, his comparison is about gender affirming language, like whether it is masculine dominant or a little more subtle. And so that's his comparison. But so a lot of people are talking about translations, I find on, particularly on Facebook right now. So, Keith, what makes a good translation?

Yeah. Oh, actually, I want to just make one side comment referring to Bob Edwards, the psychologist and professor, not Bob Edwards, the NPR broadcaster.

Yes.

So, yeah. What makes a good translation? So that's a tough question. And I'm not a Bible scholar or greek or Hebrew language expert or Bible translator, but I will refer to the motto that the NRSV translators use, which the NRSV is the new revised standard version. It's the one that our denomination tends to favor, although there's another, an updated version of the NRSV that's now become available called the NRSV updated edition because we're real creative with the names and stuff. So their tagline as they were making the translation was something along the lines of as literal as possible, as free as necessary. And so here's an example. Every translation of a verse or a word of scripture is an interpretation, because you have to decide as you're translating. Am I trying to translate this word literally, or am I trying to translate the meaning behind it? So, for example, in Isaiah, there's this fantastic scene in Isaiah, chapter six, where there are these heavenly beings that Isaiah sees in a vision in the throne room of God, and they're flying around, and they have six wings, and it says, with two, they flew, and with two, they covered their faces because they're in the presence of God, and they can't look on God directly. And with two, they covered their feet. Now, why in the world do you have to cover your feet? Well, feet, in the Old Testament and in the Hebrew language, is. Is frequently used as a. As a euphemism for genitals. So the translators have to decide, or do I say with two? They cover their feet, which is what it literally says, or do I say with two? They covered their genitals, which is what they probably meant. So you hear the tension that you have to hold in making these translations. And usually the solution is, well, we'll translate it literally and say feet, and we'll put in a footnote that says, this usually means genitals. So that's what I think makes a good translation, one that takes into account the literal meaning of a word or a phrase and the intended meaning behind that. And also. And it is a long answer to your question, Ben, also recognizing that, like any language that you translate from one into another, there's often not a one to one word comparison between the two. You know, Hebrew and Greek and English, just as three examples, are very different languages. They have different. They have different sentence constructs. They have different tenses. There are literally tenses in Greek that don't exist in English in terms of what verbs can do. And so it's a challenge to try to translate something in what we as 21st century westerners think of as accurately. So I think a good translation is something is one that takes all of that into account.

So how would you figure that out? When somebody shows you their translation? What would you look at first?

Yeah. So I tend to, like I said, I tend to favor the NRSV or the NRSV ue as it's. As it's now becoming, you know, shifting over into. But beyond that, you know, it's kind of like reading any other, you know, textbook or academic book. Look at the publisher, read the preface. What was their intention in making this translation?

Because that's interesting. They will tell you what their intention was.

Yeah, yeah. You know, they're pretty upfront about it. So, for example, you mentioned the ESV that's used by evangelicals. You know, they're. They're going to say we're. We're going for a biblically literal, literalist translation, and they, they make no defense on that because that's, that's who they are. That's what they're looking for. And that's, that's fine. That's not always what, what we're looking for coming out of the ELCA, you know, we tend to, you know, favor a translation that is, is, you know, uses more gender neutral language, for example, certainly for humanity, even probably for God when possible, although it's harder to find translations that do that. So, yeah, read the preface, read the, you know, the intros from the translators and look at what their, what their goals were, you know, what faith traditions they represent or looking to emphasize or honor. Yeah.

I also think when you're looking for a translation to use for something like a wedding, my anniversary was just the other day and Keith was there. Not at the anniversary, he was at the wedding.

No, but at the wedding, yeah, but I read from the apocrypha, I think, for your wedding.

You did you read. Yes, one of my favorites. But when you're in that environment, sometimes you just want it for readability. You want a translation that, that is easy to read and easy to understand. I think they said that the CEB is written for a reading level of whatever. I think NRSV, somewhere around 11th grade is what they put the readability at. And I think the CEB, which comes from mainline denominations, is aiming for a 6th grade to 7th grade sort of thing. It's probably not quite that. I'm sure you can look up some resources on that, but, uh, you know, so it's readability.

And, uh, the news version, which is a pretty popular one, too, especially, you know, for folks that were growing up in the fifties and sixties, I think was written at like a fourth grade level. It was very. It was partly because they were really working for people that were learning English as a second language at the time. Lots of immigrants.

Makes a lot of sense, and, and if you're going to have kids read in church, you're going to have them get up at the pulpit and have them, or at the, at the lectern and read it should be something that they can handle a little better, and I think there's perfectly good reasons for doing that.

Yeah. You know, let me say a word about the King James, too. You know, one of the. In our tradition, the King James is not used very often for a couple of reasons. One, it is, you know, it doesn't read in our modern English. Right. So even if you're familiar with English, you can sometimes just have a hard time making out, well, what is this? What does this mean? And then there's also, from a more scholarly perspective, these source material that the King James is based on, modern scholarship tends to find faulty in certain ways. I won't go into a lot of detail about that, mostly because I'll screw it up if I try. But I know that I trust the people that have written about that, and so we tend to shy away from that as a translation. Now, that being said, you know, I remember a Sunday or a Wednesday when we were in chapel in college, and one of the theater profs got up and read the story of creation from Genesis in the King James translation, you know, with his basso profundo voice and really impeccable delivery. And it was powerful. It was moving. It was a spiritual experience. So the King James has its rightful place in our. In our translation history also.

Yeah. And what's interesting, my day job at Greenfield Village, I work in a house where no, Webster finished his dictionary in 1820 1825, almost forgot. But his translation, and I'm using air quotes there. You can't see me. But his translation was a translation of the King James version into American English because it was part of his effort to eliminate the british English language from use in the United States. And so it definitely had a purpose to it. But he didn't translate. He did know Hebrew and Greek and several other languages that would be necessary, but he did not use those. He just went to the King James Version and wrote his own version of the King James Version. And so there are translations that are that way, too.

One of the most famous translations of the Bible is Luther's translation into German that he made while he was being hunted by the church authorities at the time. And he was hiding out in. Was it Wartburg Castle that he was hiding out in? And basically, to occupy himself, he translated the entire Old Testament first and then the entire New Testament from Hebrew and Greek directly into the common german language of his day. And interestingly, that translation of the Bible ended up being not only the version that was read in churches across the land at the time, but it was. What do I call it sort of the standard for the teaching of German in schools for generations afterwards. It was that well done.

Yeah, well, and it would have, you know, been one of the first things to be printed on the printing press as well.

That's right.

Right. So, so with that, we, you mentioned the apocrypha. So how do we feel about the apocrypha being in our bibles?

Well, what is the apocrypha?

Oh, well, the apocrypha is, are books that happen timewise that are written between theyre intertestamental. So they come between the last of our new Testament or our Old Testament books and before Jesus. And so they are books that are mostly stories. Theres some poetry in it. You get the Maccabees, you get some stuff in there. Roman Catholics traditionally have it in their bibles. They use readings from the apocrypha in their lectionary. Lutheran's not so much. Yeah.

The Catholics don't call it the apocrypha. They call it the deuterocanon, the second canon. So they, interestingly, they treat them as like sort of us, not quite as authoritative as the other books of the Old Testament and New Testament. I forget what the word apocrypha means. Do you remember that? But even the fact that we forgetting about what the literal meaning of the word is, the fact that, that we as Lutherans, and not only Lutherans, but other denominations refer to these books as the apocrypha, it's already like we're showing our hand. You know, we think they're interesting and relevant and important, but they're not really scripture. Right. We include them in the Bible because tradition from centuries ago kind of has them there. They're usually set apart. They're labeled as such, and they're not part of that. That count of 66 books that we refer to as the Hebrew Bible in the New Testament or the Old Testament and New Testament. I was trying to quick google what apocrypha means, and I wasn't being subtle enough, so couldn't find it.

So apocrypha means, according to Merriam Webster, writings or statements of dubious authenticity.

There you go.

That is definitely a charged statement there.

Dubious or authenticity. I had some college papers, probably came back that written across the top of.

It, and you get some pretty fanciful stories in there. The story of Tobit, which we used at my wedding, is definitely a fantasy story. It's almost a Tolkien sort of story where Tobias, the main character, is not Tobit, it's his son, Tobias, and Tobias and man who they hired be a guide who turns out to be the archangel Raphael. Go off in pursuing Tobit's fortune that he has left with his relatives, and Tobias comes back with a bride. And in the process, there's lots of magic things that happen, including catching a giant fish and using its gall and maybe its lungs and heart for different spells that are cast. Tobias marries his distant cousin and brings back the fortune. And there's this parade that seems like something out of the Aladdin movie from Disney and all this. And Tobit's sight is cured. He's blind and is cured of his blindness and becomes a wealthy man and all sorts of stuff. So it's a great story, not that I know much about it.

Don't let the marrying your distant cousin thing throw you. That happens in the Bible, too. Yeah, it's just kind of a thing at the time.

All right. So, Keith, what's your favorite translation?

Oh, so the NRSV is definitely the one that I'm most familiar with, thanks to seminary and my work in the lutheran church as a pastor. And so, you know, whenever I hear readings from that, there's, there's a comfort to that because of that familiarity. You know, some people really rave about the message, which is a paraphrase of the Bible, meaning that, you know, a paraphrase is still a translation. It's just way looser. You know, it's usually trying to find a particular vernacular sound. In this case, it was sort of like if Mark Twain had written a translation of the Bible, it would sound like the message, which was written by a guy named Eugene Peterson back in the sixties, seventies, you know, and I like that. But I find it. I find it jarring to read it sometimes because of how different it is from a more straightforward translation. At the same time, that's what some people like about it, that it makes you think about the stories a different way. I like for readability. You were talking about that earlier, Ben. I like the new living translation, which is also a paraphrase, but it's, it's going for a vernacular that is more like the common conversational English that we use today versus that sort of Mark Twain, Tom Sawyer, and Huck Finns kind of sound. But I'd still say my default translation is still always the NRSV just because it's the one that I'm most familiar with.

Yeah. And I think that's my default. And it's what, it's what I grew into, a budding theologian or whatever, as the acceptable. It was like Chicago manual of style. As far as writing papers, use NRSV in work because that was the accepted translation for religion classes and stuff. So there's that aspect I'm really curious about. The Ceb version. I want to look at that. And the other one I'm curious about and haven't dug deep enough in is Clarence Jordan wrote the cotton patch gospel. Yeah, I'm sure that's a paraphrase, but it seems like it's got some good stuff in it. I just need to get a copy of it. The musical is definitely cool, right?

Absolutely.

But that, of course, wasn't written by him. It's just based on it. And realize that each of these translations, well, most of them anyway, are owned. Right. They're owned by a publishing house that gives permission for publication and stuff. So, so we'll talk about. We'll talk about e editions and how those get sent out. And so there's always a publisher involved. And so, so.

And publishers tend to be affiliated with denominations for, for better or worse.

Right. Or movements of some sort, right? Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Now, as far as editions go, right, you've got study Bibles, and those tend to have lots and lots of footnotes and maps and maybe even places to take notes, right?

Yeah, yeah. And then you've got kind of related to that are devotional Bibles, which will have little short articles or essays, maybe reflecting on a piece of scripture or reflecting on a life situation and connecting it to various places in the Bible and those you can find, because a devotional Bible is always going to be leaned towards a particular audience. Right. You're going to have, you know, men's study bibles, women's study bibles, study bibles for teens, study bibles for, you know, missionaries. And so they all have a, you know, they all have a different sort of audience in mind as they're, as they're prepared. Yeah. And so study Bibles, you know, they may also have, like, essays in them about, like, you know, there's usually an introductory essay for each book and each section of the Bible. And those can be really helpful if you're really looking to kind of get in behind, you know, what was the context in which these books were written? What was going on in the world at the time? What was, what was perhaps the writer's intent in bringing these things, these stories together and putting them into a book.

Yeah. They've got general purpose bibles, I think, of the bibles that the Gideon pass out.

Right.

They don't have. It's just the scripture. There's not room for other stuff, just plain up.

Yeah. Might have some, you know, section headings. It's probably worth noting your section headings are not part of the text of the Bible. Those are inserted by the publisher or the translator, you know, for good reason, to try to help kind of make some sense. But they're not. They're not really part of the biblical text. Neither, in fact, are the verse and chapter numbers. Those were inserted in the middle ages to help people keep track of where they were, but they're not actually part of the original.

And that's why sometimes they don't make any sense.

Right. Yeah, sometimes they really get in the way, like, you know, why does the first creation story in Genesis, chapter one, end in verse one a of chapter two? Yeah, the numbers.

And it's probably just, that's how the line worked out. And then, of course, there's children's bibles. And this also has sort of a thing that we're hearing a bit about these days. The Bible for normal people, which is a podcast that Keith and I both listen to a bit, have a new children's Bible, a book of children's Bible stories, I should say. But you talk about those as if they're children's bibles. When we pass out children's bibles at church, they're generally a collection of stories, and so they've got one that they're raising money for. They've met their goal, and so it'll get published for sure. But generally, children's bibles, just stories. They're simplified stories, trying to get the nuts and bolts of the story and maybe some sort of message that goes along with it. Anything else to look for in children's bibles?

Well, I mean, they tend to leave out some of the gorier stuff. You know, they leave out the long, boring parts that, you know, describe the construction of the tabernacle in Exodus and all of the laws in Leviticus. And, you know, they really are focused on the stories. Sometimes, though, we have to ask ourselves, you know, what's our purpose in telling certain stories to children? You know, just because they're from the Bible doesn't necessarily mean they're appropriate. Like I said, there's already stuff that children's bibles tend to leave out. But, like, you know, we love the stories of the birth of Jesus. It's entirely appropriate for them to hear those stories. You might want to leave out the part about the children to and under being slaughtered by Herod to attempt to kill the Messiah. But, you know, most of the time that's not included. You know, the story of the Ark in Genesis with the animals going two by two. We love that story because it's got the children and that's cool. The story of God preserving the animals, and that's cool. But the part that doesn't get mentioned that's implied there is that God preserves them and wipes out all other life on the planet. And that may not be a message that you want to share with your two year old. Yeah.

So I'm looking forward to see what. See what this Bible for normal people, children's Bible, is. We'll have a link in the notes there at the bottom. What about durability? What do you look for in a Bible that's going to sustain the time and the use?

You know, it's interesting. The first thing that came to mind when I saw that in the show notes tonight was the thought that the Bible is still the most sold book of all time. Something like more than 5 billion copies have been sold over the course of history, and that makes it, by far the best selling book ever. And I don't know that I really foresee that record ever being surpassed, certainly not in our lifetimes. Maybe not the next several.

Not even the Da Vinci code.

Oh, no. It was a good book, but. And it's been translated in a lot of different languages, too.

Yeah. I'm thinking about my, you know, I've got an Oxford study Bible, NRSV, that I've got grass stains because it used it at camp. Right. So it's got grass stains on the COVID and it's got grass stains on some of the pages and. And all that. And it seems to be. Be holding up pretty well. Yeah.

I still use my Oxford, annotated from seminary, although I also, you know, the Bible is one of the only books that you get those fancy covers for. Sometimes not. You know, you can buy book covers for, like, college textbooks, high school textbooks.

But, like, the ones with zippers and stuff.

Yeah, usually a zipper and a handle. It does make it easier to carry because the study Bible, you know, they tend to be heavy. Right. Because there's a lot of pages.

Well. And they have those extra thin pages that are, like, silky sometimes.

Right, right. Yeah. And really a tricky thing to turn, which partly is probably why we've gone the digital route so much.

Yeah. So what about digital. What digital forms do you use?

So I do have an app of some translation on each of my handheld devices, and I don't worry about the consistency. I just go for whichever one's free because I'm freely. I'm only very rarely occasionally referring to it for whatever reason. I use a lot of online Bible tools, though. You know, I take a paper Bible with me to, you know, a hard copy Bible to my Wednesday Bible study that I lead on occasion, but that's frequently about it. I, you know, when I'm preaching or teaching, you know, preparing a sermon or a lesson plan, I use online tools, use Bible gateway a lot because they've got literally dozens of translations available, including the Antarctic. That's biblegateway.com, that has those available. I also use another website called oramus, which is a latin word for, oh, something that we say in the liturgy. And I can't remember what part of our Lutheran English tradition, but we'll put.

A link in the notes.

Yeah. Oremus.com dot. It's the NRSV translation, which is not the newest one. But the thing that I like about it is that it's got a word search function. So if you're looking for a particular word or phrase, you type it in and it'll show you every place that it appears in the NRSV. And that's a really helpful feature when you're either trying to say, like, how is the word love used in the book of Isaiah? Or if you're like, I've got this verse that I'm trying to find. I can remember a phrase out of it, so I can use the phrase search to, you know, narrow it down to, you know, the 20 or so places that it occurs and then. And then find it. Yeah. So I use those two every time I'm preparing to speak publicly or teach about the Bible.

Yeah, I think. I think when you're preparing a speech or, you know, slide deck or something like that, having Bible gateway or Ormus makes it just very helpful because you can cut and paste and. Yeah, I think Bible gateway, the last time I was cut and paste, cutting and pasting out of it, the cut and paste part included a reference to the scripture in the copy part. Yeah, you can do that. That was real convenient.

Right.

Also a little bit annoying at times.

But yeah, you can turn that feature off, too. But okay, yeah, Bible translations, almost without exception, as far as I know, allows for reproduction, even in print, without any. Any further, any previous permission, you know, up to a certain word count, or at least especially in things that. Where you're not making any money off of it anyway. You're just using it in class or an essay or something.

Yeah. And I'll also add that I've got the HarperCollins study Bible version of NRSV on my Kindle. And the nice thing about that is when you get a. When you get a footnote, you can tap on the footnote and you can read the footnote instead of having to make all the. Well, I guess in that case, you normally go to the bottom of the page, but it just makes it easy to make those useful sometimes. So, yeah, so it's kind of nice. Yeah.

So, yeah, I used to feel really strongly about holding a Bible when I preached. It was. It was something I was. I was told once it looks dignified.

People believe you more.

It's a symbol of authority. Right.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I did that for the longest time even, you know, whether I was preaching with or without a manuscript, I would hold on to the Bible. And then when I started preaching from my tablet, you know, I can't easily, comfortably hold my tablet and a Bible at the same time. I also don't like reading the scripture that I'm preaching on from the church bulletin. I want to read it from the Bible. So I just got into the habit of cutting and pasting that scripture into the text of my sermon at the head of the top of the document. And so now I just both read the scripture and. And preach with my sermon from the. From my tablet.

But, yeah.

Anyhow, doesn't have quite the same symbolism for me personally, but it gets the job done.

Well, you know, for that authority, I preach out of my capital, my, my leather capital portfolio. So that's the authority get to have.

Absolutely.

Go. Capital. Is there an official translation for the ELCA?

It is becoming the Nrsvue, the new revised standard version. Updated edition. I don't remember if it's in 2025 or 2026. That that's going to be the version that our publishing house, Augsburg Fortress, and its other brands are going to be referring to. But it's coming soon. Currently, it is the revised standard version.

Which came out especially important because a lot of churches use Sundays and seasons and their web tools to generate the service. And the scripture gets included in that translation. Right?

Yeah, yeah. And I'm contributing to that again. The next one's coming out, but I can't remember if it's. Are we writing 2025 right now or 2026? They start running together. So. Yeah. And I saw an article in the prep documents for that that they are switching over to the Nrsvue. So that's going to be the version for it, too.

All right. So then the last topic that we need to cover on this, is the Bible holy? I mean, I think there's different definitions for that.

Yeah. So, you know, we talked about the. About the significance of the Bible as the word of God. Actually, I don't know if we did. Is the Bible the word of God? We would say Jesus is the word of God, but the Bible is also the word of God. But then there's the question of the Bible as an object. Is the Bible holy? We see those scenes of presidents being sworn in and you put their hand on the Bible. Does that do something? If they break the oath of office, are they going to burst into flames or something? Seem not to.

So I looked this up for the Roman Catholic Church, and the Roman Catholic Church says that if your Bible is blessed, then you might want to do some special thing with it as far as a disposal. Right. So you can have your Bible blessed, I guess, as an object. And so maybe, I don't know if that's something people do be similar to going to a Taylor swift concert and getting your, your t shirt signed or something. Have your Bible blessed by the pope when he goes by, maybe. But, you know, as far as when it wears out, you know, is there a disposal process? And there isn't. But it is not unheard of for people to bury a Bible. It is not unheard of for people to. Well, you had mentioned earlier before we started talking that people tend to leave them at churches.

Yeah, yeah. You end up with a church being donated or a Bible being donated to the church because the family says, well, it's old and we don't need it, but, you know, we can't. Can't throw it out. That's how churches end up with a lot of stuff, not just bibles, but, you know, old chairs. Yeah. High chairs. Yeah. Yeah.

So the Catholics did say in that, in that particular thing that you can dispose of it as you would any other book.

Yeah.

And that, that's really comes down to the book itself is just a normal book.

Yeah. It's not, it's not a holy object. You know, one of the other ways of disposing of something that has been blessed, though, is it can be burned. And we think that's creepy, scary, weird. We talk about the Bible, but think about. We talk about burning the american flag in protests. Right. And the trouble that that can cause. But, you know, I don't know about you, Ben. When I was in scouts, the proper way to dispose of a flag that has been worn out is to what.

Is to burn it.

To burn it, right?

Yeah.

Same thing with the Bible. You're not burning it in protest. You're not burning it in anger. You're burning it in reverence. You're letting it be reduced back to the elements from which it came. So. Yeah, but it's also okay if it's a paperback Bible, to recycle it or to donate it to someplace that'll repurpose and resell it.

Yeah. Excellent.

It is a book.

It is. And we've moved on to just the catechism questions.

Yes. Yes. Exciting news about last week's catechism question, though.

Oh, yes. We have a winner. We have a winner. But let's cover the question first. The word apostle means small furry creatures that eat bugs and grubs. B is to say you are someone you're not, C is to go willingly, and D is to send out or away from. And I'm happy to say that Judy Tyler from Phoenix, Arizona, pastor at our saviors in central Phoenix, got the answer right, believe it or not, by calling me and telling me what the right answer was. And so, congratulations, Judy. You are a great one. Winner of this question. Let's see who we get to talk to us about what the right answer is. This week's question.

So does Pastor Judy win in something besides bragging rights, or is that really it at this point?

She gets bragging rights.

That's cool.

Yeah. And the next time I see her, we'll give her something awesome. I don't know what that is yet, because I don't know when I'll see her.

So for this episode's question, then, we have this, which is a bible based question, since this was our topic tonight, Mark's gospel, the shortest and earliest of the four includes which of the following incidents a, Jesus's family history b streaking c, for God so loved the world that he gave his only son, or d, the wise men? That'll be our question that we want have an answer for you in the next episode.

Yes. Wow. That's a tough one.

Yep.

Main Street Lutherans is hosted by Keith Fair and Ben Fog. You can reach us by [email protected] dot our website, which has episodes of the podcast, is mainstreetlutherans.com. We're on the socials as mainstreet Lutherans right now. That is, Facebook, Instagram, Instagram threads, and YouTube. Our phone number is 734-25-0954 and the show is produced by folk media Productions. Until next time, go in peace. Serve the Lord.

Thanks be to God.