Episode 189: Translating the Bible into Albanian with Erion Vogli

Since the end of the 19th Century, the church has been debating an issue that before that era, was not broadly contended – namely, whether or not God has faithfully preserved his word over time and between languages. For millennia Psalm 12:6 and 7 was understood to mean that God could and would protect and preserve his scriptures. …it reads “The words of the LORD [are] pure words: [as] silver tried in a furnace of earth, purified seven times. 7 Thou shalt keep them, O LORD, thou shalt preserve them from this generation for ever.” But by the late 1800’s modern academia had given rise to the critical text position, which postulated that the Bible we have, is not the Bible that God inspired. Today, the commonly held position is that God’s word was captured in the original manuscripts but was lost over time by the unreliable hands of transcribers and the inherent shortcomings of the translation process. The result of this critical view has led to an emphasis on scholarship; the archaeological, anthropological, and theological pursuit of the oldest and most eclectic text to produce the most thoughtful translation. This appeal to authority has led to an ever-expanding array of bible translations, in English as well as other languages — translations for which the scholars can not definitively say are the very words of God. Today on the show we have Erion Vogli, a man on a mission to create a reliable translation of the Bible in his native Albanian language. What gives him the confidence that this is even possible? What are his methods and how can he know they are steadfast? Visit https://www.lfbi.org/learnmore