My family has a friend named Brenna that loves church enough to go to two services every week - one on Saturday and Sunday. Brenna has a habit of capitalizing all the words in the the phrase "The Holy Bible, no matter where she uses it in her sentence.
I wish Bible translators were so emphatic about capitalizing 'God pronouns' whenever they come up as Brenna is about the Bible. My new ESV bible doesn't capitalize pronouns when referring to God. It seems like this is a trend among Bibles, and its a trend that I don't like.
This may be seen by some of you as a useless pet peeve, but I believe God deserves credit wherever He is mentioned. It also delineates who is being talked about.
The Israelites made sure to honor God in a similar way. When writing the word Yahweh, they omitted the vowels and wrote it as Yhwh. The abbreviation is known as the Tretragramaton.
Here's Wikipedia if you want more history :-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yahweh
God is Good - He is Righteous,
Brady
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6 comments:
Brady--
I absolutley share your displeasure at this trend. I believe that to honor God in all things absolutely includes our written references to and about Him, and we should be relentless in our pursuit of honoring and briging glory to Him. Crusade on!
-OG
"...but I believe God deserves credit wherever he is mentioned."
Souldn't it be
...but I believe God deserves credit wherever He is mentioned.
I agree too. I always try to be aware of capitalizing His pronouns.
I'm not sure I've ever had a Bible that capitalizes pronouns when they refer to God. Do you know of a particular translation that does that consistently?
My New American Standard Bible always capitalizes God's name when in pronoun form.
Lately I've enjoyed the English Standard Version, but I don't like its lack of capitalization in the God pronoun category.
Your Study Bible is New International Version right? From what I remember of Adam's Bible, NIV does not capitalize. But there are other problems with the NIV besides the usage of God pronouns. The Bible I am most familiar with is the NASB - I don't think the NIV matches up to either the NAS or the ESV. whew. long comment
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I too use the ESV and had the same question. In doing some research on the issue, I found information that indicates the original Hebrew text used no upper case letters at all, and original Greek text used all upper case letters. So it appears that capitalization of the pronouns referring to God and Christ are a matter of english style. My research also indicated that the earliest editions of the KJV did not capitalize the pronouns either. I am continuing to do some additonal research as a matter of personal enlightenment, but it is my prayer that the Lord will guide me and help me keep this issue in the proper perspective. I wish to honor the Lord with all that I say and do, and not slip into legalism by arguing or worrying more than I should over the capitalization of a letter. Much love to all of my brothers and sisters in Christ. God bless you.
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