An In-Depth Look at Bible Translation .The concerns, issues, and approaches .The history .The ins and outs of the translation task With a reach that covers the entire globe, the Bible is the best-selling, most earnestly studied book of all time. It has been translated into well over 1,000 languages, from those of global reach such as English, French, and Arabic, to a myriad of isolated tribal tongues. Yet while most readers of the English Bible have a favorite version, few understand how the different translations came about, or why there are so many, or what determines whether a particular translation is trustworthy. Written in tribute to one of today s true translation luminaries, Dr. Ronald Youngblood, The Challenge of Bible Translation will open your eyes to the principles, the methods, the processes, and the intricacies of translating the Bible into language that communicates clearly, accurately, and powerfully to readers of many countries and cultures. This remarkable volume marshals the contributions of foremost translators and linguists. Never before has a single book shed so much light on Bible translation in so accessible a fashion. In three parts, this compendium gives scholars, students, and interested Bible readers an unprecedented grasp of: 1. The Theory of Bible Translation 2. The History of Bible Translation 3. The Practice of Bible Translation The Challenge of Bible Translation will give you a new respect for the diligence, knowledge, and care required to produce a good translation. It will awaken you to the enormous cost some have paid to bring the Bible to the world. And it will deepen your understanding of and appreciation for the priceless gift of God s written Word. Contributors Kenneth L. Barker D. A. Carson Charles H. Cosgrove Kent A. Eaton Dick France David Noel Freedman Andreas J. Kostenberger David Miano Douglas J. Moo Glen G. Scorgie Moises Silva James D. Smith III John H. Stek Mark L. Strauss Ronald A. Veenker Steven M. Voth Larry Lee Walker Bruce K. Waltke Walter W. Wessel Herbert M. Wolf"

A recent wave of decentralization in Latin America has increased the prominence of politicians at the subnational level. Politics Beyond the Capital is the first book to place this trend in comparative historical perspective, examining past episodes of decentralization alongside contemporary ones to determine whether consistent causal factors are at play. At the center of the book is the rigorous testing of two key hypotheses that attribute decentralization to liberalizing changes in political regime type and economic development strategy. The book focuses on the four Latin American countries where politicians have most extensively engaged in the redesign of subnational institutions: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, and Uruguay. By reframing the "politics of decentralization" as the "politics of designing subnational institutions," the book moves beyond the policy orientation of much of the current literature, and broadens the debate by analyzing not just decentralization but re-centralization as well.

This volume presents a framework designed to help international development partners consider the relevance of political economy issues for their programmatic support to decentralization and local government reform. The intention is neither to advocate decentralization in general or in any particular form, nor to presume or privilege any particular decentralization objective. Instead, the purpose is to document the potential value of better understanding how (primarily national and intergovernmental) political and institutional dynamics do or could affect the scope for realizing decentralization reforms aligned with commonly advocated service delivery, governance, and poverty reduction goals. The underlying premise is that systematic analysis of these issues can productively complement the dominantly technical diagnostic work typically carried out by development partners. Specifically, development partners can benefit from better understanding the practical significance of motives that drive politicians and bureaucrats to support or oppose reform at various stages of the decentralization process, from making an initial reform decision to detailed design and implementation. In addition, the authors address how these incentives can weaken, strengthen, or shift in response to changes in political and economic conditions that arise after reform begins. A general approach to conducting political economy of decentralization analysis is outlined, recognizing the need to tailor such analysis to the particular country context. This volume is based on literature reviews and knowledge derived from selected country experiences.

Around the world, familiar ideological conflicts over the market are becoming increasingly territorialized in the form of policy conflicts between national and subnational governments. Thanks to a series of trends like globalization, democratization, and especially decentralization, subnational governments are now in a position to more effectively challenge the ideological orientation of the national government. The book conceptualizes these challenges as operating in two related but distinct modes. The first stems from elected subnational officials who use their authority, resources, and legitimacy to design, implement, and defend subnational policy regimes that deviate ideologically from national policy regimes. The second occurs when these same officials use their authority, resources, and legitimacy to question, oppose, and alter the ideological content of national policy regimes. The book focuses on three similarly-situated countries in Latin America where these two types of policy challenges met different fates; neither challenge succeeded in Peru, both succeeded in Bolivia, and Ecuador experienced an intermediate outcome marked by the success of the first type of challenge (i.e. the defence of a deviant, neoliberal subnational policy regime) and the failure of the second (i.e. the inability to alter a statist national policy regime). Derived from the in-depth study of these countries, the book's theoretical argument emphasizes three critical variables: 1) the structural significance of the territory over which subnational elected officials preside, 2) the level of institutional capacity they can harness, and 3) the strength of the societal coalitions they can build both within and across subnational jurisdictions. Transformations in Governance is a major new academic book series from Oxford University Press. It is designed to accommodate the impressive growth of research in comparative politics, international relations, public policy, federalism, environmental and urban studies concerned with the dispersion of authority from central states up to supranational institutions, down to subnational governments, and side-ways to public-private networks. It brings together work that significantly advances our understanding of the organization, causes, and consequences of multilevel and complex governance. The series is selective, containing annually a small number of books of exceptionally high quality by leading and emerging scholars. The series targets mainly single-authored or co-authored work, but it is pluralistic in terms of disciplinary specialization, research design, method, and geographical scope. Case studies as well as comparative studies, historical as well as contemporary studies, and studies with a national, regional, or international focus are all central to its aims. Authors use qualitative, quantitative, formal modeling, or mixed methods. A trade mark of the books is that they combine scholarly rigour with readable prose and an attractive production style. The series is edited by Liesbet Hooghe and Gary Marks of the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and Walter Mattli of the University of Oxford.

Protestant Missionaries in Spain, 1869-1936: "Shall the Papists Prevail?" examines the history of the Protestant denominations, especially the Plymouth Brethren, throughout Europe that attempted to bring their churches to Spain just prior to Spain's First Republic (1873-1874) when religious liberty briefly existed. Protestant groups labored feverishly, establishing churches and schools designed to gain converts and thereby prove the supremacy of their theology in Spain as the foremost Roman Catholic country. Religious liberty was reintroduced in the 1930s during the Second Republic, but failed when General Francisco Franco won the Spanish Civil War and unified the culturally and linguistically diverse nation through the doctrine of religious uniformity. Equally important is the question of why the Roman Catholic Church felt compelled to expel them from Spain. After the First Vatican Council (1869-1870), Spain became the battlefield between Protestants and Catholics, each vying to demonstrate their preeminence. Using primary sources from Spain and the UK, this book recreates the story of these missionaries' struggles and examines their motivations for making significant sacrifices.

As economic reform in developing countries has shifted from macroeconomic stabilization to liberalization, opportunities for legislators to influence the process and outcome of reform have increased and their role has become more important. This book focuses attention on differences in institutional structure, in political parties and electoral rules, to show how they create incentives that can explain the varying ways in which legislators respond to policy initiatives from the executive branch.

In Argentina and the Philippines, presidents proposed similar fiscal reforms in the 1990s: expanding tax bases, strengthening tax administration, and redesigning tax revenue-sharing with subnational governments. Drawing on archival research and interviews with policy makers, Kent Eaton follows the path of legislation in these three areas from initial proposal to final law to reveal how it was shaped by the legislators participating in the process. Obstacles to the adoption of reform, he demonstrates, are greater in candidate-centered systems like the Philippines' (where the cultivation of personal reputations is paramount) than in party-centered systems like Argentina's (where loyalty to party leaders is emphasized).

To test his argument further, Eaton looks finally at other kinds of reform ventured in these two countries and at tax reforms attempted in some other countries.