That appeared to be a miracle and it appeared to validate the cult. A barren woman might go to the fertility cult’s temple, have sex with a male prostitute-priest, and give birth to a child because her husband was sterile, but the priest was not. (The cult of Artemis in Ephesus mentioned in Acts 19 is one of them.) Their temples were filled with priests and priestesses who had sex with the worshippers as a religious rite. The ancient world was filled with fertility cults. If a woman was barren, they always assumed that it was the woman who had the problem. In the ancient world, there was no way to know that a man could be sterile. The Common English Bible often broadens the meaning of the text to fit a contemporary context, even when the contemporary context is quite different from the biblical context. It’s like someone took bits and scraps from our contemporary culture and pasted it together into something that resembles the Bible. The Common English Bible de-emphasizes the legal, cultural, social, political, and economic context of the Bible in favor of our contemporary values and settings. The Common English Bible is sold as a translation, when in reality, it is a paraphrase. For that reason, I have to write in stronger terms.ĭisadvantages of the Common English Bible Many people are going to encounter this translation for the first time not in a bookstore, but in church, which is an environment that confers more accuracy and authority on it than it actually has. Cokesbury has received a number of complaints and cancellations from clergy.
I’m going into greater detail here, because Cokesbury switched their Word Alive bulletin inserts to the CEB without warning and without giving subscribers an alternative. It gives more weight to what modern people want to hear than to what the biblical writers wanted to say. From reading their material, I get the impression that the translators essentially crowd-sourced the final wording.
It is supposed to reflect changes in our culture, language, and worship. The Common English Bible poses as a translation but it is really a paraphrase.
You can read about how to develop a good Bible reading plan.
Here is something that might help: a list of modern translations that you are likely to find in a bookstore, with a description of their major advantages and disadvantages. You decide to buy yourself or someone else a Bible, so you run down to the nearest bookstore-but they have so many different translations, you don’t know where to begin. Teachings, worship, rites, sermons, and terminology