Those who have read and used my Context Group Version translation of the Bible may have noticed I have not updated it recently. Indeed, I have not updated anything much on this website for over a year. Much of it has to do with events in my life that have taken up almost all of my available time, both professional and personal. To start, My no-longer-very-new job that I started in December of 2008 still manages to take up a lot of learning time due to my no-longer-very young brain.
In addition, last year I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, stage 2C3. That stage basically means it is about to, or at a small level already has spread outside the prostate. So last year was taken up with tests, more tests, biopsies, and six months of daily radiation treatments. However, as John Piper, another fellow prostate cancer survivor always says, “Now I feel fine and the doctors are happy.” Not much more to say. As cancer survivors know, tomorrow can bring a change; but for today…
Then immediately after the treatments finished, death paid too many visits to my family in 2011. Though I escaped it’s clutches, on the very first day of the year it claimed the college-aged, basketball star son of my cousin. Then my mother-in-law died in April and my Father-in-law at the very start of this November. It seemed we would finish one funeral only to start planning the next, with little time for actual grief and mourning.
So my time has been pretty tied up for the last two years. Not for the better. However, these were not only reasons I stopped worked on updating the CGV. I hit a very large dead-end in the way I designed the CGV to be used. One I thought was truly fatal to the translation.
You see, I tied the major usage of the CGV to the Palm Pilot Palmbible+ package. Then Palm changed the OS of their cellphone/palm pilots to WebOS. That made the Palmbible+ package obsolete. In essence, unless you used a rather expensive Palm emulator program my Bible Version became just as obsolete. Then even the Palm Pre’s WebOS became obsolete when it was bought out and then abandoned by HP. I thought the CGV went down with the Palm Pilot ship.
I started to work on porting it over to the Kindle, but the effort frankly was not where my interests lied, and it would have taken over a year’s solid work with no change in the actual text itself. That prospect just didn’t excite me. Maybe it is selfishness or lack of faith, or whatever, but cancer does teach you one thing: your time is limited. I decided I wanted to spend whatever time I have left (and it may be decades) with my wife instead of in front of a computer screen.
The death of Michael Spencer may have also contributed to my change in priorities as well. Methinks had Spencer known he would die in his 50′s, he would have spent less time blogging as well.
But….
There always is a but… but this time it is for the better!
In the last few days, I have received correspondence from Brad Cobb of the McLoud Church of Christ. He desired to make the CGV available in e-sword format. With the documents I was able to provide, he succeeded. So for those that use the PC Program e-sword, you can now download and use the Context Group Version here. According to Cobb, 27 users downloaded the version in the first couple of hours it was available. That is somehow very gratifying to me. (That may be more than ever downloaded it for the Palm in the years it was available on that platform!) The E-Sword program itself, if you don’t have it already can be downloaded from here.
However, I am a Mac user and iPhone user. E-Sword is not easily available on either OSX or iOS. However, all is not lost there either. For Mac and iPhone users, my Palm program had the here-to-fore unused option of creating “Sword” project files. (E-Sword and Sword are two entirely different programs–confusing, I know.) Anyway, I am going to make the Sword versions available for download here. Warning: click on the link and the download will immediately start.
The Sword Program for the PC can be downloaded here. The Mac Version (which right now is called “Eloquent” (Heaven knows why) can be downloaded from here.
What is more awesome to me is that the Sword Project has an iPad and iPhone version that can be obtained using the iTunes connection from here. Imagine, the CGV can now be put on your iPhone or iPad for free!
Once you download the Sword module, and load the iPhone app, the instructions to put them together are here. I tried them, and they work great. CGV is now on my iPhone 4S. I am again energized…
…I’m thinking of some mods for the next installment. James B. Jordan insists that the word we translate as “keep” in the Old Testament (as in “tend and keep the garden,” “My brother’s keeper”, etc.) is best translated as “guard” or “guardian.” Checking with my Hebrew sources, he may be on to something. I’ve done some preliminary work, and the substitution often makes better sense in the passages than not…. and “slime” being used for mortar in the Tower of Babel? What was I thinking???
Yep, this could be the start of a great friendship…
Thanks, Brad. I hear the flickering screen calling to me again.
