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Results from: Answered Bible Questions, Answers, Unanswered Bible Questions, Notes Ordered by Verse | ||||||
Results | Verse | Author | ID# | |||
1 | What does "send her away" refer to? | Matt 1:19 | Sir Pent | 63456 | ||
A Different View ............................. Dear John, In your post, you mentioned that you believe that “even the best translations are not infallible for infallibility is ascribed to the original manuscripts alone.” I would just like to point out that I disagree with that statement. I believe that since God went to the trouble of leaving a permanent record of His message to mankind (the Bible), that He would also protect that message across time, copies, and translations. Otherwise the only people who would be able to really trust God’s message would be the very small number of Greek and Hebrew scholars in the world. .......................................................... I believe that the major translations of the Bible are completely accurate, truthful, and trustworthy today in whatever language a person reads them in. This issue has been discussed before on the forum, and I would recommend reading that thread which started with post number 15402. |
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2 | What does "send her away" refer to? | Matt 1:19 | Hank | 63534 | ||
Sir Pent, greetings and good wishes. I completely agree with you. The major translations are very reliable. Of course, this would rule out the cult versions and the silly ones, like Cotton Patch Gospel and one that I found on the net some time ago: some clown was in the process of "translating" the Bible into pig Latin. There are sticklers for "literal" translations who would "swear on a stack of Bibles" -- I beg forgiveness for so obvious a pun -- that word-for-word is always more accurate than thought-for-thought. But 'taint necessarily so. A translation can be accurate without being extremely literal. A fine example of this is to be found in the New Living Translation, which is my choice of the best thought-for-thought translation in modern English today. The translators cite in their introduction to this version the example of the Hebrew idiom "he slept with his fathers" which KJV and NIV translate respectively "he slept with his fathers" and "he rested with his fathers" but the NLT translates simply "he died." The NLT translation, "he died" is not literal but it is accurate and what's more, it's clearer. We don't say in contemporary English, "My friend went to sleep with his fathers." That is an ancient Hebrew idiom but not a modern English one. We say, "My friend died." One final comment: The Jacobean (also called Elizabethan) English of the King James Bible was fresh and new and clear in 1611. It is none of these things today, and neither are the translations and revisions that are based on the King James, those which, though somewhat modernized, still follow the word flow, syntax, and basic vocabulary of the King James. We don't talk or write that way today, so the meaning is frequently obscured by the language itself. So it's a delightful experience to read a translation of the Bible that is truly contemporary, yet tells the old, old story accurately and reverently in a fresh and exciting way. The New Living Translation flows naturally, the way language always should, and it impacts the reader of modern English in much the same way as I would suppose Paul's letters initially impacted his readers --Hank | ||||||
3 | What does "send her away" refer to? | Matt 1:19 | Sir Pent | 63563 | ||
Personal Note ................................................. Dear Hank, Greeting to you as well, my friend. Thanks for your agreement, and I am glad that you have found such success with the NLT. I am not personally acquainted with it, but it sounds helpful :) |
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4 | What does "send her away" refer to? | Matt 1:19 | Hank | 63579 | ||
Further notes on Bible translations....... Sir Pent: This is an interesting subject to me particularly since I majored in English, studied Latin, French, and German, and have always liked to hang around words and to read good literature. But there is another, less personal and more important reason, why I think the subject of Bible translation is of great importance. Not until the middle of the 20th century was any concerted effort made to provide readers of English a modern translation. Yes, there were the American Standard Version of 1901 and a few others, but they fell short of gaining a great deal of public notice. Then circa 1950 and since there has been a plethora of translations, running the gamut from formal, word-for-word "literal" to varying degrees of though-for-thought or "paraphrased" versions. Each of the philosophies of translation has found both favor and disfavor by the reading public. Some hold the view that paraphrased versions are a new and threatening trend that are not faithful to the biblical manuscripts, while other readers complain that the literal translations are wooden with an unnatural flow of thought and are thus difficult to understand...... But the idea of paraphrasing is by no means a novel innovation of the 20th century. In A.D.670 Caedmon paraphrased parts of Scripture into Anglo-Saxon. It was not until 1382, however, that John Wyclif and his associates gave the English the first complete Bible in their own language. Then came Tyndale, Coverdale and a succession of a half dozen more, culminating with the Bishop's Bible, of which the King James Version of 1611 is a revision. Although heavily criticized in its early years, in time the KJV won the field and became "the Bible" for English-reading people -- a position it has held for almost 400 years. But the profound changes in the English language during those nearly four centuries have taken their toll on the venerable King James Bible. New generations find its language strange and parts of it downright unintelligible. It no longer speaks with the freshness of the young and vigorous language that English was in 1611. Standard English syntax has changed. Pronouns and verb conjugation have changed. English vocabulary has changed so that many words that were familiar to the 1611 readers are either foreign to current English usage or have changed in meaning, a few actually meaning the opposite of what they meant in Elizabethan times. I do not decry the King James Bible; far from it. It will always remain a masterpiece of English prose, but it is severely limited to deliver its message to any modern reader who is untutored in the English of that by-gone day. The severely "literal" translations have their serious drawbacks too. The language, while it may use a contemporary vocabulary, does not and cannot flow naturally on account of the restriction placed upon it to cast into English the word flow of the ancient tongues of Hebrew and Greek. The natural syntax of one language is not the natural syntax of another. The idiom readily understood by the readers of ancient Hebrew or Greek is likely to fall on deaf ears to the readers of modern English when it is rendered in a literal word-for-word manner. The Bible was written to be understood, by scholar and common reader alike. The translation effort in all its forms is a sincere effort on the part of many people of many different religious persuasions to make the Bible accessible and understandable to people to whom it might otherwise be a closed book. A diligent study of any of the efforts will increase one's understanding of the Bible. Perhaps the ultimate translation for each reader is the one that most influences his life and his behavior in bringing him to Christ and keeping him ever closer to Christ in his walk with the Master. --Hank | ||||||