In Search of Kingdom Living

This is my first book review of the term and I thought it was apt to look at a book that I was going through for my personal devotion.

The book, The Last Eyewitness, was the first book issued by the Voice project that is spearheaded by Chris Seay. It is a the scriptural account of the final week of Jesus’ life as told in the book of John – but retold for our present age. Here’s the philosophy behind this new ‘translation’.

A New Way to Process Ideas
A group of writers, poets, scholars, pastors, and story tellers have committed to work together to bring the Scriptures to life in a way that celebrates both beauty and truth. The result is a retelling of the Scriptures: The Voice, not of words, but of meaning and experience.

The Voice is this project to recapture the narrative voice of the Scriptures. It’s retelling seeks for ’soul connection’ to the reader, no just ‘mind translation’.

A New Retelling
But “translation” is not the right word. It is really the retelling of the story. The “retelling” involves work of translation and paraphrase, but mostly entering into the story of the Scriptures and recreating the event for our culture and time. It celebrates the role of scholars, but it also values the role of writers, poets, songwriters, and artists.

There’s a lot more that I can quote about the purpose and vision from this project, but you can check it out in detail at www.hearthevoice.com. It’s really wonderful to see a group of Christian scholars, preachers, visual and musical artists come together to retell the biblical story.

As I was reading the book, I often went to the website for supplementary resources. They have various video clips that help bring a certain passage to life. In addition, there’s a music project that accompanies the writings. Clearly, this project is trying to capture our modern multifaceted way of learning.

I greatly enjoyed reading this book, and would count it as reading the biblical story. Since I have taken both biblical Greek and biblical Hebrew, I am even more aware of that no translation or paraphrase has a perfect or unbiased translation. I value the emphasis on word-for-word translations (I use NRSV and NASB), thought-for-thought translations (NIV, TNIV), paraphrases (The Message), and these new retellings such as the Voice. I celebrate the diversity of these retelling of the scriptures, and I believe it is purposeful to study the original languages.

If you want a fresh retelling of the passion story for devotional purposes, check out this book.