Hi everyone, my name’s John Bainbridge.

My research the last few years clearly indicates that “the Lord” in English is simply not functioning the same way as Yahweh, Kyrios and ho Kyrios were in the Biblical languages and is therefore overdue a tough review process, on both usage and grammatical grounds. Apparently, I'm onto something - an offer to publish with Wipf&Stock was received earlier this year, an opportunity to speak at an international conference soon has come up and some frankly fascinating conversations have been had along the way.

Bible Translators need to at least reassess how we translate these biblical ideas of divine authority today, and now a great opportunity has come up to highlight and explain that need! World leading Bible-translating agency, Wycliffe, put out a call for papers for their biennial Bible Translation conference this October, and my proposal on this exact topic has been accepted.

I'm really hoping it will give translators a new approach and perspective on how we mirror the authority language we find in the original texts. I will also give a few examples of new ways we could be tackling the issue in English via a much more context-driven, bespoke method. Finally, I want to ask them to think even decades and even hundreds of years into the future: if their translations and even target languages do survive, are they sufficiently intentional about the *relative* usefulness? In other words, asking how can we plan for more evolutive expressions than “Lord” has experienced over the last 6-700 years?

I would really appreciate your support. I'm appealing financially because my costs are not covered, the conference is being held in Dallas and my own income is low. In all, I have managed to keep my costs super low, I expect around 900 euro (or £800). I have accountability in both the form of a supervisor and my local church, Eglise Pierres Vivantes, Marseille.
Thank you so much 😊