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Trinitarian Bible Society – Quarterly Recordwell received by Arabic speakers round theworld.We would covet your prayers that theseScriptures would prove to be a blessingand a means of salvation to manyparticularly throughout the Muslim world.Endnotes:1. Recent figures in National GeographicMagazine (vol. 222, no. 1, July 2012, p. 60), showit fourth in a listing of ‘first language speakers’ at221 million.2. The region covered by the ministry of MERF(Middle East Reformed Fellowship) today.3. A term coined in the 1990s referring toregions between 10 and 40 degrees north ofthe Equator, having high levels of social andeconomic challenge, and yet the least accessto the Gospel, the Bible, or Christian ministry.Roughly two-thirds of the world population livesin the 10/40 Window, people predominantlyMuslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Animist, Jewishor Atheist, having governments formally orinformally, passively or aggressively, opposed toChristian work.4. Nahla Haidar, ‘Arab Identity Questioned’,Beirut Institute (beirutinstitute.net/forum/getattachment.ashx?fileid=43, accessed21 August 2012).5. The Bedouin way of life depended on camelsand horses. The famous ‘Arabian’ horses werebred for war, with speed, endurance, soundness,intelligence and a good disposition. Prized warmares would be kept inside the family tent forprotection from weather, theft and predators.6. The earliest surviving texts in any form ofArabic are the inscriptions of eastern SaudiArabia, from the 8th century BC.7. To be ‘hands on’ with written Arabic try TheArabic Alphabet, How to Read and Write it byNicholas Awde and Putros Samano (London,England: Saqui Books, 1986).8. Other than the Roman-written Maltese (anArabic/Italian conflation), and the West Africanlanguages with the Ge’ez script.9. Roman province of Petraea, now Saudi Arabia,home to Mecca and Medina, still known asHijaz—The Barrier.10. Monophysites were a Christian sect from451, who held that Christ’s natures were sounited that, although the ‘one Christ’ was partlyhuman and partly divine, His two naturesbecame by their union only one nature, thus‘mono-physis’.11. This was of uncertain quality over thecenturies; however, no one who ever met thelate Fouzi Ayoub (a long-standing missionarysupporter of the Society) could be uncertain ofhis blistering commitment to Christ, the Word,and his determination to use his privilege asan Arab from the region to preach Christ to theArab people. The Society’s project to provide anArabic Bible with fuller vowelling would havethrilled him.12. I have heard it said that after Constantine’simperial Christianity, there were no truly new‘Christian’ heresies. Muhammad was exposed toall that there were!13. A Greek harmony of the Gospels by a Syrian(Assyrian?) Christian of very shaky doctrinalunderstanding.14. Roman Catholic minority group in Syria.15. This may seem an absurd judgment, and yeta plague of translation work is the inclinationof workers to follow AV English rather thanAV principles. A version of the Bible which is atranslation of a translation cannot be completelytrue to the Biblical languages. It becomestoo often clumsy in syntax and sentenceconstruction, uncouth to native readers as wellas unfaithful.16. This is the full version and, I think, the correctspelling of the name: usually just Van Dyck orCornelius van Dyck in the literature.17. He also produced an Arabic Psalter-hymnal,and an Arabic edition of the WestminsterConfession Standards.18. I have had the great pleasure (thank you,TBS) of researching and writing these articlesfor over fifteen years, and the accomplishedworkload of these men humbles me utterly, asdoes the price paid by so many wives. Brethren,pray for the missionaries and families of our day.30