Working for the Word - a Bible translation podcast

Read or download this chapter or the whole work: God's Word Is Not Bound.

Is copyright really a form of property, and is copying actually theft? In this chapter of God’s Word Is Not Bound, I examine copyright through Scripture and natural law and argue that intellectual property turns justice on its head. Biblical property rights exist to prevent conflict over tangible things: if someone takes your sheep, land, or money, you no longer possess what was taken. But ideas and words work differently. They can be copied and shared without depriving anyone of them. The chapter argues that Scripture nowhere treats copying words or ideas as theft and even presents the copying of God’s Word as something to be encouraged. When copyright is applied to Scripture, the problem becomes especially serious: human beings use state power to restrict the copying, translation, recording, and distribution of revelation that ultimately belongs to God. Rather than accepting copyright simply because it is legal or customary, Christians are challenged to ask whether the state has any God-given authority to manufacture ownership rights over information in the first place, and whether placing “all rights reserved” over God’s Word is really stewardship or a perversion of justice.

Miqra according to the Masorah (מקרא על פי המסורה) is a Hebrew edition of the Tanakh in a digital online format under an open license. It is based on the Aleppo Codex and related manuscripts, and corrects the thousands of spelling errors in the Leningrad Codex, while transparently documenting the changes and sources.
Read the English introduction at length.
Read the documentation of the changes.
Mikraot Gedolot.

If you'd like to talk about volunteering to help with this podcast, please write to me at [email protected].

In the last episode, we covered the dark origins of international copyright law, as well as a very short and condensed argument that copyright law constitutes a perversion of justice. So, if you haven't yet listened to that episode, I would strongly encourage you to go back and do so before continuing on with this one.
This episode will focus on a practical to-do list explaining what organizations will need to accomplish before they can comply with this complex web of international regulations before they release Scripture as public domain. Also, I will provide a link to a Word document that has generic form templates that organizations can use with their attorneys to get started with policy changes and the right things that everybody will need to sign—both volunteers and employees—to make sure that nothing inadvertently gets locked under automatic copyright traps.
Of course, every organization's legal counsel will need to affirm these things and probably tailor them to specific regions as needed. I hope this is useful and helpful for everyone. Get ready for a wild ride, because what you're about to hear will surprise most of you.

Bibliography.

Ministry generic form templates doc.

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This is the beginning of two episodes that deal with the legality issues that organizations face when they want to obey Scripture and make Scripture free. This has come about based on some conversations I've had with YWAM on the possibility of their organization switching to a public domain publishing policy for their translated Scripture. As you may know, YWAM has become heavily invested in Bible translation in recent years, and they are doing a lot of work around the world. I would love to see them lead the way in showing the translation organizations that it's not only possible to release Scripture as public domain, but it is blessed. It is more blessed to give than to receive.
Now, to set the stage for the complex international copyright legality issues, we have to understand a few things that this podcast episode is gonna cover. The first is that copyright and patent law are a perversion of justice, far from a stance of natural rights and biblical law. Each Christian needs to decide, when they're faced with a perversion of justice, whether they will follow that or whether they will walk in the footsteps of the Hebrew midwives, Rahab, Moses's parents, Obadiah hiding the prophets, Daniel, Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, Esther, Mordecai, and others, and decide not to cower before the twisting of morality by current sinful rulers. Each organization will have to decide how much they actually want to bow before the complex web of unreasonable, absurd, foolish, and unjust copyright laws that serve to strangle the free sharing of truth in the world and keep down poorer countries who are unable to comply with this web of regulations and high costs.
Nevertheless, it is good for everyone to understand the dark origins of international copyright law that began with greed, selfishness, censorship, and disregard for human flourishing. Once we have established this history and the many points in the development of this legal structure, the next episode will cover exactly what every ministry would need to do to fully comply with the laws before they release Scripture as public domain.
This may sound shocking and absurd—that you need permission to release something freely—but that is actually the case because of how messed up these laws are. This episode will explain how it became that way. You'll learn a lot, as I did.
Please share it far and wide so that more Christians become educated on this important issue that affects the Great Commission in a massive way. Once an organization has listened to this episodes and the next one, they should be equipped to move toward unbinding the Word of God. It's my hope and prayer that many organizations choose to bow to the command of Christ and give Scripture completely free of restrictions, rather than bow to profit margins, to the spirit of the age, and to an unjust regime that has destroyed the progress of human knowledge.

Conversation generated with NotebookLM.

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In this episode I had the privilege of interviewing my friend Ryder Wishart whose organization has launched a new, free mobile app that facilitates recording and managing oral Bible translations, especially where there is no internet.

Learn more about LangQuest.
Learn more about Ryder.

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