Thursday, August 13, 2009

The Twelve Tribes of Evangelicalism

As a Seminary graduate, my "dynamic equivalence" Bible translation skills are not to be underestimated. Here is my take on Exodus 1:1-6:
These are the names of the children of Evangelicalism who came to America with the twenty-first century, each with their respective leader: Catholic Converts (Thomas Howard), Orthodox Converts (Frederica Mathewes Green), Anglicans (Alan Jacobs), Southern Baptists (Albert Mohler), Hard-core Reformed (Michael Horton), Hold-outs (Franklin Graham), Intelligentsia (Mark Noll), Culturati (Mako Fujimura), Emergents (Tony Jones), Lefties (Randall Balmer), Bible-busters (Bart Ehrman), and Hedonists (Larry Flint).

Then Evangelicalism died. But the children of Evangelicalism (each one of them determined by their father whether they realized it or not), were fruitful and increased greatly... so that the land was filled with them.
My translation may seem a bit on the eisegesis side, but I assure you this meaning comes naturally from combining Brown-Driver-Briggs with D.G. Hart's disconcertingly insightful book Deconstructing Evangelicalism, which I shall perhaps summarize/critique in a future post.