Why won’t the Ukrainian Bible come out until 2012? Why is it taking so long?

Compared to what? If we were translating “Gone with the Wind,” which has 200,000 words, it would take about six months. But “Gone with the Wind” is in English, a much easier language than Greek or Hebrew. It’s in one language, not two. And the subject matter is much easier. It’s not like Exodus, full of highly technical terms for animals, plants, minerals, architecture, textiles, and altar appointments. Gone with the Wind was written as entertainment. The Bible is intended to be spiritually and mentally challenging. It’s also much longer, because for marketing reasons we also have to translate the Septuagint. One million, 600,000 words, not counting the Apocrypha. Eight times as long as Gone with the Wind. Three times longer than War and Peace.

And the Bible is quite different from any other document in its readership, because experts will dissect and analyze every word. Pastors use short texts from the Bible to write sermons, articles, classes, and books. They dig into these texts as deeply as they can, using either the original languages or commentaries by professors who know the original languages. For this reason, our readership includes many people who have become experts in a few hundred verses or paragraphs of the Bible, and our translation has to be right or those pastors will not recommend our translation to their parishes. » Read more: Why is it taking so long?

For the third time, an unsolicited gift of $2,000 has come from Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Columbus, Ohio, to pay for New Testaments to distribute to those who need them but are too poor to pay.

In the past, we have flooded three prisons with these New Testaments, and have also provided them to orphans, unwed mothers who visit our life centers, street kids, people in drug and alcohol rehab, and the destitute elderly in government institutions. In the past, about one fourth also went to a special program for poor handicapped children. Since Ukraine now has a beautifully illustrated full-color children’s Bible, and since almost all these children are far too poor even for a wheelchair let alone a TV set, this might be the most beautiful thing in their homes. At the moment this project is suspended because there is no funding even to print such Bibles, let alone distribute them.

If you would like to help us distribute more New Testaments, please donate today! Please also contact me and mention the amount and designation for your gift.

And may the Lord bless you as you bless others. These Bibles and Testaments will not sit on a coffee table. Most Ukrainians don’t have coffee tables! Or houses big enough to keep one in! And they will not gather dust on a top shelf. They will be READ.

Three verses in the Koran completely contradict its theology. Mohammed’s explanation was that the devil made him do it.

Three verses just in Genesis seemed to contradict Biblical theology, so the oldest translators intentionally mistranslated these verses, as though they were mistakes by the scribes who had hand-copied and re-re-re-copied these words for over a thousand years.

But they weren’t mistakes. The translators just didn’t understand that the doctrine of the Trinity has many hidden proofs in the Old Testament. This fact was first brought to light by author Yoel Natan-the most important book on the Trinity in the last 1500 years. It’s subtitled “When Rabbis Worshipped the Father, Son and the Holy Spirit.”

For 2,300 years Bible translators have been intentionally mis-translating. (There’s even a joke about how archeologists in Rome found a decree from an ancient Pope and realized that priests were supposed to “celebrate Mass”, not be a “celibate mass” but they left the “R” out of the first copy….) » Read more: Satanic verses?

By Bohdan Kachmar. Translated by Roger Kovaciny.

Allow me to introduce myself. I am Bohdan Kachmar, Ukrainian. My first doctorate was in medicine. I am close to a second doctorate in theology from Andrews in Berrien Springs, Michigan. Theology will keep people alive forever and not just as long as their hearts keep beating. Until fifteen years ago I practiced cardiology in Moscow, which was paradise in the Soviet Union. Purgatory was being a slave laborer in the Soviet gulag.

I would have been in the gulag together with my friend Roman Vovk except that I read Sherlock Holmes.

Back in Soviet times, printing the Bible was a crime that would get you 12 years of “re-education”. Americans have no idea what this means. It means: » Read more: How Sherlock kept me out of the Gulag

You may think that proofreading a translation is a simple matter. In fact it is almost as much work as translating it in the first place, especially for someone like myself who didn’t even learn the Ukrainian language until I was 42. (Our translators translate; I proofread. NO foreigner is good enough to do a translation into a language that is not his own in a large and modern country that will only buy a high-quality product. Especially when that country is Ukraine and has an extremely rich and highly nuanced theological vocabulary.)

I learned the language by studying grammar books, living in Ukraine, conversing, teaching English and four other languages while speaking Ukrainian, and reading their Bible all the way through, every book in one to five translations including one so old it uses a different alphabet. Reading a foreign Bible involves looking up and writing down the meaning of every word I didn’t know. During this process I discovered that practically every chapter of their Bible contains one or more words that I can’t find in any of my 12 dictionaries. This shows the need for a new translation–even Ukrainians can’t understand their own Bibles. And say so. Frequently.

To translate the Old Testament, first I prepare a book such as Genesis by reading it in Hebrew, looking up and writing down every unfamiliar word and form. Hebrew is so difficult that in the beginning, this meant every other word! (By now it’s “only” every fifth.) The Hebrew language is so complex that you need an 800-page two-column book of small print on large pages just as an index to the dictionary! It was certainly within God’s providence that, as knowledgeable Lutherans like Prof. Herman Sasse have written, the college and seminary I graduated from have the finest program of Biblical languages that Lutherans have in the Western Hemisphere. Our reputation stretches all the way to Germany. » Read more: How Bible proofreading works

As I do chores around the house, I like to listen to sermons from Emmanuel Lutheran in Columbus, Ohio. This morning the one I happened to pick up was on Transfiguration, from sometime back in February or March. But this morning happened to be Transfiguration-on the Eastern calendar. With all the books and tapes and CDs floating around in my inadequate office space, it worked out that on Transfiguration I “accidentally” got a Transfiguration sermon.

Actually, there have been so many coincidences of that kind that I think of them as little love letters from God. » Read more: Love Letters from God

Ukraine already has four complete translations of the Bible. There are three you can trust but you can’t completely understand, and one you can understand but you can’t completely trust.

The three old translations use language I would call King James Ukrainian. Jesus and the Twelve sound like Robin Hood and the Merry Men. Many of the words in these translations aren’t found in any of my twelve dictionaries, and many Ukrainians don’t even have one.

The new translation you can understand but you can’t trust, because it was largely made with the help of a computer’s translation program. Also, it was translated from the Russian, not from the original languages. » Read more: Doesn’t Ukraine have a Bible translation?

Years ago, a member of the church who worked for us said “I’m a thief.”

I hope he meant “before you hired me”–but he said “You have to understand our system. My boss pays me so little that my family would literally starve if I didn’t steal from the organization. So I do. He knows I do it, and he wants me to do it so I’ll be afraid of him, and so I can’t tell HIS boss what HE is stealing.”

Stealing and bribery are pervasive in Communist society; it was a system of interlocking thievery that is only slowly being dismantled. When I arrived in the former Soviet Union in Ukraine, salaries were five or ten dollars a month–and all you could steal. Things the government wanted you to have were heavily subsidized, so rent was a dollar a year, but it still wasn’t enough to live on. Stealing and bribery became an art form. » Read more: A dollar an hour and all you can steal