Why is Amplified Bible missing from base packages?

I am not speaking for Logos, but I spent 20 years in Christian publishing.

Bible publishers told me that the Lockman Foundation (which owns the rights) is one of the more difficult copyright holders to deal with.

I have noticed several publishing oddities that seem to confirm this over the last 4 decades.

Edwin Bowden said:

I am not speaking for Logos, but I spent 20 years in Christian publishing.

Bible publishers told me that the Lockman Foundation (which owns the rights) is one of the more difficult copyright holders to deal with.

I have noticed several publishing oddities that seem to confirm this over the last 4 decades.

Your history and expertise are spot-on. But I won't say much more.

Dave Hooton said:

I got the Amplified with the NAS Electronic Bible Library.

I purchased the Amplified Bible from Logos individually before I bought the NAS Electronic Bible Library. So I have two, I guess. [:)]

Ronald Quick said:

Does anyone have a good example of a misleading text?

I think what's being said is a valid criticism; that a person who believes (yes...they do exist) that you can just "pick the word that seems to suit you" is being done a disservice. Words have meaning, and context drives that meaning.

For example:

From Hebrews:

   ³He is the sole expression of the glory of God [the Light-being, the out-raying
or radiance of the divine], and He is the perfect imprint and very
image of [God's] nature, upholding and maintaining and guiding and
propelling the universe by His mighty word of power. When He had by
offering Himself accomplished our cleansing of sins and riddance of
guilt, He sat down at the right hand of the divine Majesty on high,

    ⁴[Taking
a place and rank by which] He Himself became as much superior to angels
as the glorious Name (title) which He has inherited is different from
and more excellent than theirs.

 

"The "light being"? Is that what the original author meant when he said "Theos?"

 

Here is another example:

 ¹PAUL, SILVANUS (Silas),
and Timothy, to the church (assembly) of the Thessalonians in God our
Father and the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One):

    ²Grace
(unmerited favor) be to you and [heart] peace from God the Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ (the Messiah, the Anointed One).

Since when is εἰρήνη "heart"?

 

It's misleading in that people believe that you can just insert any one of the choices into the text...that's simply not true.

Jim,

Slow down...lol...

The point is that the amplified (loudened/bullhorned/increased/verbosed) bible is that it gives you many choices of a word and many people think that you just "pick the one that fits"...and that's the difference between the Amp bible and a translation...that's the misleading part...not that the translators of the amp have made their choices....all translations make decisions...but that's the EXACT ELEMENT that's being discussed here...not translation choices....

Robert ... on your examples of the Amplified Bible text, keep in mind that brackets mean something added; NOT in the original greek/hebrew. I got the Amplified, just like I got the Message Bible for the same reason .... another 'take' on the original text. I think its often misleading to assume you can easily move from one language to another without loosing embedded meaning. This is obvious if you're familiar with hebrew, and then read the LXX.  I'm always a bit suspicious when someone worries that 'people might read the Bible wrong'. As if there's someone who has the 'right' version.

Denise Barnhart said:

As if there's someone who has the 'right' version.

Actually, that would be what we are shooting for would it not? What the original author meant in his own context?

A word has one meaning in it's context, and the point of all I've said was that many people use the amp bible as a "pick what word you think fits best and insert it" sort of bible...

THAT'S why I said I didn't like it.

I wasn't commenting on whether it was included because of that reason...I'd have no way of knowing anything about that.

Joshua Garcia said:

Logos is not only for the "uninformed". I can't see just any Joe Christian picking up the Scholar's base package.

Yep, partial knowledge can be very misleading. Some people don't understand electricity. Double-distilled water does not conduct electricity. But if someone acts on this partial knowledge without knowing "regular" water conducts electricity well, that person can be electrocuted,

I do not think the answer is to protect "Joe Christian" from having the tools to dig deeper, but to give the non-scholar all the tools possible and teach him how to properly handle those tools. A few weeks back Ted Hans quoted from the D.A. Carson book, Exegetical Fallacies. That post led me to purchase another Logos resource, The Hermeneutical Spiral, that I am enjoying very much.

Jim VanSchoonhoven said:

You must understand how it was translated and what it's purpose is, but that is true of all translations.

If a user understands the proper use of The Amplified Bible, it will benefit their studies. It is NOT a translation in the true sense.

David Ames said:

Pick a word? Wrong! (as I understand the amplified version)  In this version the one WORD that all the other versions use is to be seen as not one word but the SUM of ALL of the listed words.  A word has a range of meaning and the Amplified is trying to show us that range. 

It's wrong for any translation to do that. In a given context, a word does not exercise its entire lexical range; the full range is not available to the reader. On the contrary, it is a fundamental hermeneutical and translation principle that a word in a given context should be understood to carry the most narrow unit of meaning out of its entire lexical range, not the broadest.

David Ames said:

[Also there is another similar tool now gathering interest :

The Emphasized Bible, by Joseph Bryant Rotherham, is a unique translation which helps English-only Bible readers to understand the linguistic and literary nuances of the Greek and Hebrew texts. This translation aims for a literal rendering of the original languages, and adds markings to]

I have more respect for Rotherham's than for the Amplified, and Rotherham did readers e a service with his grammatical apparatus. He also revised it according to the latest available text critical scholarship. But it's still way out of date these days. I like some of his renderings however, I much prefer 'And God said 'Light, be', and light was', to the KJV.

Jim VanSchoonhoven said:

This is the purpose of this bible, it is geared towards those that do not know Greek, and it is helpful when two or more very literal translations are not making sense to you, by bring up other possible ways that passage could have been translated.  It does this by giving you a bunch of possible meanings, that you can use in the context and see if one of those meanings fit better.

What concerns me is that this gives the layman the idea that they can do a better job of translation than professional translation committees. I've seen too much 'Amplified Bible abuse' and 'Strong's Concordance abuse' to view favourably any tool which gives the layman the false illusion of superior knowledge without learning.

Looking at a bunch of alternative readings doesn't make the layman any better able to translate the text than if they were looking at a translation which only provided one reading.

I think you can get it but you have to pay extra.

by the way...

I'm neither for; nor against the Amp bible...I really don't care.

I was merely EXPLAINING what another poster had tried to say...lol

I was also EXPLAINING what people do when they see it (same as they do with lexical resources) they pick what word seems good to them...

 

I'm not using this to poo-poo the Amp bible...just trying to EXPLAIN why another poster said it was misleading....(not that the editors of the Amp bible were trying to mislead anyone...)

 

I hope that's clear....

I also agree completely.

 Years ago when they made the fatal decision to move from the latin to the german, I just KNEW they were going down a slippery-slope.

Of course, I wasn't alive, but that was a minor issue.

Jonathan Burke said:

But the Amplified Bible specifically encourages a particular kind of abuse. It encourages it actively.

Whilst the Amplified Bible may enable a certain type of abuse I think it is wrong to associate this with any form of intent to encourage abuse. There are a whole range of Bibles, Language Tools, Commentaries, Theologies, etc. that can be used to abuse God's word.

Personally I also feel that the use of the term "lay person" is itself an abuse of others it is certainly one that I avoid because it is divisive and is actually poorly defined. I'm guessing that in the context of this thread "lay person" is synonymous with a person who does not posses the appropriate education in the original languages to determine the true meaning of the original text but another definition could be those who have not been ordained as "priests" within their denomination.

The problem is not the tool but the way we train people to use the tool and also the way we keep people away from tools that could damage them. I know many well educated so called "lay" people who use the Amplified Version, knowing its limitations, to help them get a deeper insight into God's Word.

Jonathan Burke said:

I will say that if I had been left to believe that the Amplified Bible was improving my ability to understand Scripture, it would have taken me a lot longer to learn important principles about translation, and about understanding Scripture. If someone hadn't explained to me that the way I'd been using Strong's for years was completely wrong, I would have perpetuated that same error for who knows how long. I don't want anyone to have to spend years and hours learning very simple principles which they could learn in five minutes and save themselves the kind of time I wasted.

Jonathan I am interested in what you are saying here and I mean this from a learning standpoint. I am a layman without any knowledge of the original language what so ever have nothing more than a 12^th grade education. But I truly like to study Gods Word and have for many years ‘and  understand how important it is to use the right word in the context you are studying and my idea of this is to use the BDAG and the Louw-nida to help me chose the right word. Is this in the ball park of what you are talking about? If you don’t mind explain to me in layman’s terms what I need to do to get the most out of the many hours I dedicate to studying Gods Word. I have L4 platinum library

Thanks very much

 

Matthew C Jones said:

I am willing to entertaing divergent views so that I may have mine published too. The scholarly works you value probably could not get published in Logos without other works subsidizing scanners, coders and keyers.

This is not about entertaining divergent views. The Amplified Bible is not a book on theology.

Matthew C Jones said:

Many Logos users complain frequently in the forums about resources they deem unfaithful to their understanding of the Bible.

I'mnot one of them.

Matthew C Jones said:

I am sure you and Robert don't agree with every resource Logos publishes. (How could you?) Why start with The Amplified Bible?

Because:

* It's not a translation which is sufficiently faithful to the Word to be more useful or even as useful as the majority of standard modern translations, including the paraphrases

* It's based on out of date textual criticism

* The way it is presented leads people to false conclusions about Scripture, and more importantly false conclusions about their ability to translate Scripture, which they fondly believe is more accurate than the ability of professional translators

Matthew C Jones said:

Others actually like The Message and I should not impede their access to it, no matter how much I want to protect them from it! )

Leaving the Message out of all Logos collections would not make it inaccessible to people. It's actually sold in bookstores. You can buy a copy just about anywhere. It's also available in a range of electronic formats. We should not confuse the choice not to provide a particular service or product, with censorship of that service or product. These are two completely separate issues. Similarly, when you come into my house and I expect you to mind your language, I am not in any way impeding your free speech; you're perfectly at liberty to walk out of my house and say what you like.

Graham Owen said:

Whilst the Amplified Bible may enable a certain type of abuse I think it is wrong to associate this with any form of intent to encourage abuse. There are a whole range of Bibles, Language Tools, Commentaries, Theologies, etc. that can be used to abuse God's word.

I don't think there was any intent to encourage abuse, it's just the result of the way the tool was put together.

Graham Owen said:

The problem is not the tool but the way we train people to use the tool and also the way we keep people away from tools that could damage them. I know many well educated so called "lay" people who use the Amplified Version, knowing its limitations, to help them get a deeper insight into God's Word.

If there wasn't any problem with the tool, we wouldn't have to train people to use it properly and we wouldn't have to keep people away from tools that could damage them. If people are getting a deeper insight into God's word with the Amplified Bible, I have to wonder how they know that's what they're getting, and I can't help thinking there are more efficient ways of doing it. I can get a good picture of myself by squinting into a dirty and broken mirror and moving around so I can see small parts of my face revealed imperfectly in those parts of the mirror which are sufficiently clear to see with, or I can just use a clean and unbroken mirror.

Jim VanSchoonhoven said:

There  have beeen several comments to the effect that the Amplified Bible is not a translation, I am not sure I agree with that statement.  I would point you to the Lockman site for information on this http://www.lockman.org/amplified/

It's clearly a translation; it's in English.

Jim VanSchoonhoven said:

In either case it is important to read the preface in both bibles in order to understand how it is to be used.  I find that most believers fail to do this before reading their bible, which often leads to misunderstandings.

I would also like to point out this is true no matter if I like the translation or dislike it, I need to understand what the purpose of the translation was.

These points are well made.

 

Jonathan Burke said:

If there wasn't any problem with the tool, we wouldn't have to train people to use it properly and we wouldn't have to keep people away from tools that could damage them.

Jonathan, Are 747 jumbo jets a bad tool? Do we have to train pilots how to fly them? Do we owe it to the 350 passengers on board to keep you out of the cockpit?  Paul would not have warned Timothy to rightly divide the word unless it is possible to wrongly divide it. 2 Timothy 2:15 .Training is a good thing.

Jonathan Burke said:

It's clearly a translation; it's in English.

Just because it is in English does not mean it originated in another language. (A certain Book of Mormon is in English but lacks original manuscripts.) We have had a similar discussion before regarding The Message (a paraphrase.)  The Amplified Bible is a verbose expansion of the original. It contains an inflated translation.

Jim VanSchoonhoven said:

I would also like to point out this is true no matter if I like the translation or dislike it, I need to understand what the purpose of the translation was.

Like Jonathan said, your points are well stated Jim.

So the final responsibility for our own study rests on our own shoulders.  All the more reason to double-check the scholars who have gone before us. Paul admonished Timothy to study, not do rote memorization of doctrinal dogma. If I have to account for my own study efforts, I want to be able to choose my tools.

Back to the question that was asked, I seriously doubt the Amplified bible is not in any of the base prices because it is a resource that is easy to abuse, it is most likely due to some publishing deal, but only Logos can tell us for sure.

To be honest with everyone I have abused every language tool that I own at some period of my life including the Amplified bible, Strongs, BDAG, and anything else I can think of, and yes, I have studied Greek and I find out almost every year how I have abused another tool! I am currently working on a DTH degree and I am still finding out new ways that I abuse language tools, education helps but so does an attitude of constantly learning and a willingness to look at our own mistakes.

One quick question, the fellowship I belong to does not have a distinction between layman and clergy, where do we get the idea of layman being different from the clergy???

In Christ,

Jim VanSchoonhoven

Jonathan Burke said:

My personal approach, in this order, is this:

1. Read the New English Translation: it has a massive number of footnotes which provide so much text critical and lexical information (including quotations from lexicons such as BDAG), that there's rarely a need for me to consult a lexicon, and I'm

2. Read standard scholarly commentaries: this is where I typically find much more useful information on the text, and especially the words in the text, than I could get from my own personal reading of the text in English or the original language

3. Do a word search to see where else a particular word is used in the Scriptures: this helps me see which other passages may be related to the one I'm reading, and how the word is used in a range of contexts; however, it doesn't provide me with an authoritative range of meaning for the word

4. Look up the word in a lexicon: this is where I typically find any information I may not have found up to this point

I would say that 80% of the time I don't need to go further than step one, and 90% of the time I don't need to go further than step two. Step three is typically for the sake of interest, and to detect uses of the word which may not be detectable in an English translation (this helps prevent me committing the exegetical error of 'exegeting the English' in other texts). I may or may not skip step three, but 95% of the time I don't even get to step four. I hope this helps.

Thanks Jonathan for the help. i also use the ESV and the notes that go with it. If you don't mind would you explain to me what a Standard scholarly commentary is and maybe suggest some of the commentaries that are scholarly in my platinum library.

Again Thanks for the help

Sam West said:

Thanks Jonathan for the help. i also use the ESV and the notes that go with it. If you don't mind would you explain to me what a Standard scholarly commentary is and maybe suggest some of the commentaries that are scholarly in my platinum library.

Again Thanks for the help

You're welcome Sam. As for your question on commentaries, I can hardly do better than recommend this article on the Logos site. Another very useful article is the Logos guide to multi-volume commentaries, which can be found here. As another resource, this scholarly site reviews commentaries and recommends which commentaries are best for which kind of uses.

In Platinum, I would recommend:

* Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (8 vols.)

* Baker New Testament Commentary (12 vols.)

* The New International Greek Testament Commentary (13 vols.); an excellent scholarly commentary

* The United Bible Societies’ New Testament Handbook Series (20 vols.); a scholarly commentary intended to help professional Bible translators

* The United Bible Societies’ Old Testament Handbook Series (21 vols.); a scholarly commentary intended to help professional Bible translators

Graham Owen said:

But then we would have to "dumb down" every tool so that it can be used by anybody and that is unrealistic and restrictive.

I'm not suggesting dumbing down good tools to prevent people misusing them. I'm suggesting:

* Guiding them away from bad tools

* Helping them understand how to use good tools well

Ted Hans said:

Hey Jonathan, what translation is this your are referencing? I have tried an Amazon and Logos search for the 'New English Translation' but no joy. Could you please point me to this translation? Blessings.

http://net.bible.org (AKA NET Bible)

Jonathan Burke said:

Graham, thanks for making this comment. The term in this context simply differentiates professionals from non-professionals, which is the common use of the term. I included myself in this category, and certainly had no intention of being derogatory. Nor was it in any way a reference to priests and laity.

I did understand your use of the "lay person" in context and personally feel that it is one of those "loaded" phrases that we need to be careful about using a lot like "fundamentalist" and "liberal". I genuinely appreciate that you were not trying to be derogatory in using that phrase but it is so open ended in its meaning that it can cause unnecesary conflict. Sorry if I cam across a bit harsh in my earlier comment on this.

For me this thread is important because it is opening up issues that need to be discussed and that more Christians need to be aware of. The denomination that I belong to proudly says that "we believe In the verbal inspiration of the Bible" yet many of our ministers and members have never taken the time to think about the implications of this. The very way that this is worded to me implies that we affirm the inspiration of the original manuscripts and therefore should have an interest in Textual Criticism, know which text we prefer and why. We still have a lot of people who remain loyal to the KJV, and I understand why, but most of them do not then understand that this makes an implicit statement about the preferred text being Textus Receptus!