Here’s good news for users of Accordance Bible Software, one of the leading apps for Bible study. The two most popular and widely used Japanese Bible versions are now available as Accordance modules.

Accordance added the New Japanese Bible (新改訳聖書 – Shinkaiyaku Seisho) sometime last year.

Shinkaiyaku on AccordanceIncludes the Old and New Testaments

Accordance added the New Interconfessional Translation Bible (新共同訳聖書 – Shinkyodoyaku Seisho) sometime this month.

Shinkyodoyaku on AccordanceIncludes the Old and New Testaments, and the Deuterocanonical Books

Which Japanese Bible version do you think Accordance should add next? 

Having introduced Seizo Sekine’s anthology of ancient to modern readings of the Akedah narrative (Genesis 22), I decided to search for Japanese scholarly treatments of the Genesis story that are available online.

Caravaggio's Sacrifice of Isaac

Here are four studies I found—representing four different disciplinary approaches—with links to full-text PDF articles. Continue Reading…

The Story of Abraham’s Sacrifice of Isaac: Akedah Anthology, edited by Seizo Sekine and published earlier this year, is an invaluable reference for scholars, students, and any other Japanese readers interested in the history of interpretation of the story of Abraham’s “binding” of Isaac in Genesis 22.

Sekine, Akedah

Sekine has collected an impressive number of the most important texts written on this Genesis narrative from ancient to modern times. The breadth of texts is remarkable—the anthology includes texts originally composed in Hebrew (from classical to modern), Greek, Latin, Arabic, German, Danish, English, Spanish, French, and Japanese.

Personally, I found it helpful to make an English list of the texts in Sekine’s anthology, and I think it may be helpful to some readers for me to give the list in both English and Japanese here.

For each time period, therefore, I have given the Japanese list of texts (using Sekine’s titles) followed by an English list. In most cases, I have given the standard English translation of the work, but where an asterisk (*) occurs, I have simply translated Sekine’s Japanese title for that text.

Texts in Seizo Sekine’s Akedah Anthology

I 古代・Ancient

  1. 旧約聖書偽典
  2. 新約聖書正典
  3. アレクサンドリアのフィロン「アブラハムについて」
  4. ヨセフス『ユダヤ古代誌』
  5. アウグスティヌス『三位一体論』『神の国』
  6. ミドラシュ・ラッバー『ベレシート・ラッバー』

Continue Reading…

The Bulletin of the Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan (Nippon Oriento Gakkai), or 『オリエント』(Oriento), has nearly 50 years of scholarly research freely available online.

PDF articles from volumes 5 (1962) to 51 (2008) can be accessed through English menus on the journal’s page at J-STAGE (Japan Science and Technology Information Aggregator, Electronic).

Most of the articles are written in Japanese, of course, but most of these include English abstracts (at the beginning of the article in some volumes, at the end in others).

The Society for Near Eastern Studies in Japan has also posted PDF images of volume covers going back to 2003. The covers helpfully include bilingual tables of contents, making this an easy way to scan the most recent article titles: Continue Reading…

 Kenichi Kida, “Martin Buber’s Interpretation of the Bible”

This Japanese lecture was given at Doshisha University’s Center for Interdisciplinary Study of Monotheistic Religions (CISMOR) on May 15, 2010.

CISMOR has provided a lecture summary and handout (PDF) on its website.

Japanese Title: 木田 献一「マルティン・ブーバーの聖書解釈」