Southeastern program will train Bible translators

Southeastern program will train Bible translators

WAKE FOREST, N.C. — Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary is poised to offer a new doctoral program emphasis that will provide the International Mission Board with world-class linguists as it reaches people groups around the world with the gospel.

Pending faculty approval in August, Southeastern’s Ph.D. program will soon begin offering a new concentration in Bible translation, a cross-disciplinary study intended to turn out scholars qualified to translate Scriptures from the original Greek and Hebrew into languages that have never had written copies of the Bible.

The program, which will start in the fall of 2004, was conceived after Southeastern’s academic dean, L. Russ Bush, heard about the IMB’s partnership with Wycliffe Bible Translators to appoint translators for service overseas. Knowing that no Southern Baptist seminary currently offers a degree program in translation, Bush contacted Andreas Kostenberger, director of Southeastern’s Ph.D. program and a respected Greek scholar. The two then developed the idea for a Ph.D. concentration in translation.

The program will be cross-disciplinary, Kostenberger noted, because it will require proficiency in Greek and Hebrew as well as advanced training in linguistics.