Academic literature on the topic 'Bible stories, English, Juvenile'

AbstractThe King James Bible was widely celebrated in 2011 for its literary, religious and cultural significance over the past 400 years, yet its staunch critics are important to note as well. This article draws attention to Catholic critics of the King James Bible (KJB) during its first 300 years in print. By far the most systematic and long-lived Catholic attack on the KJB is found in the argument and afterlife of a curious counter-Reformation text, Thomas Ward's Errata of the Protestant Bible. This book is not completely unknown, yet many scholars have been puzzled over exactly what to make of it and all its successor editions in the nineteenth century – at least a dozen, often in connection with an edition of the Catholic Douai-Rheims Bible (DRB). Ward's Errata, first published in 1688, was based on a 1582 book by Catholic translator and biblical scholar Gregory Martin. The book and its accompanying argument, that all Protestant English Bibles were ‘heretical’ translations, then experienced a prosperous career in nineteenth-century Ireland, employed to battle the British and Foreign Bible Society's campaign to disseminate the Protestant King James Bible as widely as possible. On the American career of the Counter-Reformation text, the article discusses early editions in Philadelphia, when the school Bible question entered the American scene. In the mid-nineteenth century, led by Bishop John Purcell in Cincinnati, Bishop Francis Patrick Kenrick in Philadelphia and Bishop John Hughes in New York City, many Catholics began opposing the use of the KJB as a school textbook and demanding use of the Douai Rheims Bible instead. With reference to Ward's Errata, they argued that the KJB was a sectarian version, reflecting Protestant theology at the expense of Catholic teachings. These protests culminated in the then world-famous Bible-burning trial of Russian Redemptorist priest, Fr Vladimir Pecherin in Dublin, in late 1855. The Catholic criticisms of the KJB contained in Ward's Errata, which was reprinted for the last time in 1903, reminded the English-speaking public that this famous and influential Protestant version was not the most perfect of versions, and that it was not and never had been THE BIBLE for everyone.

Responses from ordinary English church-goers suggest that viewing filmed presentations of Bible passages can both elicit emotive reactions to the texts and promote a greater cognitive understanding of the stories portrayed. In some cases, differences between the viewers’ prior experience of the text and its interpretation in film provoked deeper engagement and lead to fresh and fuller understandings of the passages. However, the power of conveying the Bible through film is seen by some as potentially undermining an orthodox Christian view of the texts. A consideration of other visual presentations of biblical stories, past and present, supports the importance of such resources in promoting biblical engagement among ordinary English Christians. However, the context of their employment needs consideration and care should be taken to inculcate a healthy hermeneutics of suspicion regarding any film version as one possible interpretation of a text with more than one possible reading. Indeed, the very process of viewing the Bible on the screen can be used to introduce Bible-readers to the plurality of meaning inherent in these ancient texts and the different ways in which they may be understood.

In the preface to publisherJohn Murray's 1858 two-volumeHandbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine, one of the first guidebooks specifically for British tourists to the Holy Land, author J. L. Porter claims that his objective is not just to provide a geographical summary or to outline travelers’ routes, but, more importantly, to link his descriptions with the “sacred dramas” of the Bible so that the tourist “may see with his ‘mind's eye’ each scene played over and over again” (xi). In such a spirit, this Murray guidebook tells both the well-known stories of the Bible and the more mundane particulars of finding interesting places and dealing with local middle-eastern people. TheHandbookweaves together traditions of pilgrimage, the journey to a spiritual center, with tourism. In other words, it seeks to balance the pilgrim's desire for divine revelation with the tourist's interest in physical comfort and gentle visual stimulation. It incongruously pairs a conviction of the value of Christian self-sacrifice and hardship with a desire for bourgeois leisure. With a sly humility, Porter notes in his Preface: “The Bible is the best Handbook for Palestine; the present work is only intended to be a companion to it” (xi). As second to the Bible, this travel guide aspired to bring the English traveler's spiritual journey to the Holy Land into harmony with the secular pleasure of sightseeing.

AbstractIt is a commonplace that adults who had access to the Bible as youngsters remember being told the tale of Daniel in the lions' den. It is easy to see why, and why this story has become a staple of Christian teaching: it is action-packed, distinctive, and reaches a conclusion that favours the apparent righteousness of its protagonist. However, Daniel's theological and historical consequences clearly extend far beyond the lions' den, so this article investigates the history of its limited pedagogical deployment by examining redactions of it in five popular eighteenth-century Bibles for English children. The theological issues in Daniel that captured the imaginations of its early adapters are ascertained, and evidence is found that the book's prophetic, visionary, and apocalyptic content has long-since been regarded as difficult for young people (especially in comparison to its apparently more straightforward court stories). Equally, in these problematic areas where the source's density raises opportunities for interpretative latitude, this essay contends that ecclesiological rather than theological responses to the text tended to surface, as Daniel's retellers—often obliquely—attempted to manage the book's indubitable complexity by domesticating it to their own subjective priorities.

This study aimed to find methodologies of translation and interpretation of The Message of the Qur`ān and the contribution of The Message of the Qur`ān to the development of the study of the Qur`ān. This study is library research with the inferential-descriptive method using historical, linguistic, and philosophical approaches. The primary data of this research is the translation and interpretation of the Qur`ān in The Message of the Qur`ān. The study shows that the type of translation of the book is tafsiriyyah translation with grouping some verses based on the small themes in the surah (munasabah). Asad interpreted the Qur`ān using the sequence of surah (tartib mushafi), with the analytical method (tahlili) and the style of adabi ijtima’i. The sources of his interpretation include the Qur`ān itself, the Hadis, the interpretation from the earlier scholars, asbab al-nuzul, sirah, dictionaries both Arabic and English, Bible, and the contemporary scientific theories. Through his work, Asad not only presented the translation with a strong linguistic study, but also enlivened the study on the Qur`ān studies, such as muhkam-mutasyabih, nasikh-mansukh, and the stories in the Qur`ān. The Message of the Qur’an has been written in the contemporary method and become one of the comprehensive English translations of the Qur`ān for Muslims today.

Most education in the pre-colonial Middle East and South Asia was inextricably permeated by religion, in that it relied heavily on study or memorization of religious scriptures and rituals for the purpose of training believers, or on the use of religious texts or stories to teach ostensibly secular subjects such as geography or history. Colonial penetration of these areas introduced a new model of Western education, in which the curriculum was dominated by material whose truth claims were not based on religious faith, and which were not taught through the medium of religious texts. Religion, if allowed at all, was confined to discrete classes on the topic. This marginalization or exclusion of religious material did not necessarily mean that the resulting education was inexorably secular: Gauri Viswanathan has demonstrated that British educators in India circumvented policies forbidding the teaching of Christianity in government schools by creating English literature courses designed “to convey the message of the Bible.” In contrast to its predecessors, however, Western-style education was based on the conceptualization of religion as a discrete subject separate from and incapable of shedding reliable light upon worldly matters, and on the premise that it was mastery of these worldly matters, rather than knowledge of sacred scriptures and rituals, that would bring students success. In this model, religion would be understood “as a new historical object: anchored in personal experience, expressible as belief-statements, dependent on private institutions and practiced in one's spare time.”

Purpose of the research. This research paper focuses on the models of creating a feedback loop as a narrative technique implemented in the following biblical narrations: the story of king David in 2 Samuel, king Manasseh in 2 Chronicles, prophet Jonah in Jonah from the Old Testament. The paper aims at identifying narrative mechanisms and linguistic means of creating a feedback loop in English biblical discourse. Methods. The methodology of the feedback loop reconstruction integrates: narrative analysis and contextual-interpretive analysis to show axiological meanings of the ecologically charged biblical narrations; elements of syntactic analysis in order to determine cause and effect relations between events and actions, or axiological changes in the participants’ behavior; structural analysis and semantic analysis – to distinguish the models of creating a feedback loop according to the criterion of their complexity. Results. The feedback loop as a narrative technique in English biblical discourse reflects the didactic stages of teaching man by God and man’s responsibility for his environment. Explicitly marked causal relations outlining ecological imbalance in ecologically charged biblical narrations are manifested by means of gradation, syntactic parallelism, polysyndeton, and repetition. The narrative technique of creating a feedback loop in English biblical discourse is represented by three models. With regard to the number of the participants involved in the information transmission, three models of feedback loop can be singled out: the model of a simple feedback loop, the model of extended feedback loop (there is an additional turn), and the model of complex feedback loop (there is a mediator). Conclusions. This narrative technique entails the modification of the whole model of relations (presented in the stories of king David in 2 Samuel, king Manasseh in 2 Chronicles, and prophet Jonah in Jonah from the Old Testament), as it depends on the participants’ values and behavior alterations, as well as spiritual changes in worldview and lifestyle of a man or the whole society. Key words: Bible, biblical narrations, discourse, ecological values, feedback loop. Мета. У статті розглядаються моделі формування петлі зворотного зв’язку як наративного прийому, реалізованого у біблійних нараціях Старого Завіту про царя Давида з Другої книги Самуїла, про царя Манасію з Другої книги хронік, про пророка Йону з однойменної книги. Мета дослідження полягає у з’ясуванні наративних механізмів та лінгвальних засобів формування петлі зворотного зв’язку в англомовному біблійному дискурсі. Методи. Під час реконструювання етапів формування петлі зворотного зв’язку залучалися: наративний і контекстуально-інтерпретаційний аналіз для виведення ціннісних смислів оповіді; елементи синтаксичного аналізу з метою з’ясування причинно-наслідкових або умовно-наслідкових зв’язків між подіями, вчинками, ціннісними змінами у поведінці учасників подій та структурно-змістовий аналіз для розмежування моделей петлі зворотного зв’язку за критерієм їх складності. Результати. Петля зворотного зв’язку як наративний прийом, властивий англомовному біблійному дискурсу, відобра-жає проходження людиною етапів повчання від Господа і, відповідно, усвідомлення відповідальності щодо свого існування у навколишньому світі. Експліцитно марковані причинно-наслідкові відношення, що актуалізують причини або наслідки порушення екологічної рівноваги, реалізуються за допомогою стилістичних прийомів градації, синтаксичного паралелізму, полісиндетону, повтору. З огляду на кількість задіяних учасників у передачі інформації наративна техніка формування петлі зворотного зв’язку в англомовному біблійному дискурсі представлена трьома моделями: простої петлі зворотного зв’язку, розширеної петлі зворотного зв’язку (з’являється додатковий її виток) або складної петлі зворотного зв’язку (залучається додатковий посередник, що маркується появою нового витка-відгалуження). Висновки дослідження. Зазначена наративна техніка передбачає модифікацію всієї моделі відносин, оскільки залежить від того, як змінюються цінності і поведінка залучених до неї учасників, як відбуваються духовні зміни у світосприйнятті і способі життя людини або усього суспільства. Ключові слова: Біблія, біблійні нарації, дискурс, екологічні цінності, петля зворотного зв’язку.

Abstract This paper presents cognitive poetics as an agent in overcoming difficulties in translating bible stories for young children in the multi-lingual and multi-cultural South African environment. The translated picture book texts typically involve the integration of words with pictures. For the purposes of this article, the Genesis 28 narrative of Jacob’s dream in the Hebrew source text is compared in various South African translations. Religious literature was chosen as subject matter because of the relative certainty of comparative translations in most of the eleven official languages of South Africa, but the present article is limited mainly to English and Afrikaans translations. The analysis is done within the fairly new framework of cognitive poetics, which combines psychological and cognitive linguistic approaches to the study of literature. The focus is on the contribution of cognitive linguistics to the translation of children’s literature, in the spirit of proactive translatology.

A previous paper on methodological considerations in interpreting the Bible for childrenexplored the problem of the cognitive gap between biblical interpreter and child. Thisresearch is a follow-up as a result of recognition of necessary adjustments in the way that childevangelism is usually approached (via �original sin�). In our current context of postmodernism,the manner and consequences of biblical knowledge transfer between adult and child needto be explored. Recent research suggests that children are sensitive to the underlying causalstructure of the world and seek to form new causal representations at a much earlier age thanwe had previously supposed. �Intellectualists� in the anthropology of religion hold that religionis primarily concerned with providing explanatory theories, thus indicating that childrenneed help to achieve coherence between biblical and scientific views on creation. This articlepresents the rationale for an early intervention to avoid the cognitive dissonance that oftenarises as children grow up and find a lack of coherence between their early evangelisationand the latest scientific discoveries. To test this hypothesis a multilingual illustrated bookletin English, Afrikaans and isiXhosa was designed to be individually read by parents in eachlanguage group to their own 5�8-year-old children. Children�s Bible stories have alwaysbeen �pretexts for passing along values� and this booklet is no different. The purpose of thebooklet was to lay a foundation for children to find Christianity relevant even in the multiculturalcontext of vast scientific and technological advances. The subjects� responsivenesswas recorded by video camera, and afterwards the parents were individually interviewed andasked to assess the child�s level of interest and to comment on the booklet. Results of this pilotstudy indicated that the booklet was well received.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: In today�s postmodern, globalcultural context children need help to achieve coherence between biblical and scientificversions of creation. This pilot study tests an evangelical booklet designed to lay a foundation for children to find Christianity relevant even in the multi-cultural context of vast scientific and technological advances.

Text in English
This study focuses on the strategies and devices used to create humour in children’s literature. No language is a replica of another language and it is generally accepted that a translator has to be creative in order to make the Source Text (ST) meaning available to the Target Text (TT) reader. The research conducted in this study aims to fill a gap regarding the application of humour in the rather under-researched field of children’s literature. A descriptive framework was used to conduct this qualitative study in order to be able to describe the linguistic strategies and devices used to translate the English source text by Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator into the Afrikaans Target Text, Charlie en die Groot Glashyser by Kobus Geldenhuys. Literary devices to create humour, employed by both the writer and the translator, were identified and analysed. Interviews and reading sessions with ST learners (English) as well as TT learners (Afrikaans) were conducted in order to observe their non-verbal reactions as well as document their verbal comments to complement the data obtained from the textual analysis. The textual analysis showed that the literary device most frequently applied in the ST was the simile and the main trend regarding the transference of humorous devices to the TT was to retain the device with formal equivalence. The most popular translation strategy was direct translation with the most important shifts identified on morphological and lexical level and shifts in expressive and evoked meaning were relatively low. With regard to the reading sessions, the most positive results from both groups of learners regarding humorous devices in the ST and TT were obtained for the device of inappropriate behaviour.
Linguistics and Modern Languages
M.A. (Linguistics)

This chapter shifts attention from the private reading of the Bible to its public reading in church. It explores complaints about the ‘bare reading’ of the liturgy from the 1570s, and its defence by defenders of the established church. It explores the guides that promoted rhetorical delivery, and which explained the Bible as a series of affecting stories that congregants could relate to. It recognizes that complaints about bare reading in the 1570s had a second phase in the late 1580s and 1590s when a style of oral reading as protest was launched to defend preaching by a group of puritans writing as ‘Martin Marprelate’. It explores an unusual riposte from an unexpected quarter, Thomas Nashe’s Christs Teares over Jerusalem, arguing he set out to give readers the experience of live preaching in book-form. And it invites us to think differently about how books in this period were experienced.

When the Spanish invasion force of 1588 met with successful English resistance and disastrous weather, losing thousands of men and 62 of 130 ships, contemporary observers and participants on both sides believed the outcome reflected God’s intervention. English sermons used Bible stories to develop a patriotic and providentialist interpretation of the gathering threat and subsequent Spanish defeat. Sermons before the attempted invasion, by Thomas Drant, Meredith Hanmer, and William Gravet, demonstrate the comparison preachers drew a between Islam and Roman Catholicism (as Spenser created a Muslim sultan to represent the Roman Catholic Spanish threat). Sermons celebrating the English victory, by John Prime, Thomas White, Roger Hackett, and Stephen Gosson, show that Spenser and the preachers drew on the same biblical theme of God’s judgment and motifs of horses, chariot, and hardware.

This chapter investigates recitation's progress within the mass educational systems that developed in Great Britain and the United States over the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thus, this historical survey begins by scrutinizing the experiences of partial populations of individuals at relatively elite levels of society. First, it considers the utility of verse and memorization for very early learners, examining the service role played by poetry and poetic devices in the extended period during which rudimentary education in English was understood primarily as a necessary tool to unlock the Bible and Christian scriptures. It then proceeds to the era in which certain kinds of schools began to assign the memorization and recitation of vernacular literary and oratorical extracts as a task for their advanced readers. The chapter concludes with a brief consideration of the factors that affected the constitution of juvenile recitation canons over the years.