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NASB | Matthew 1:19 And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not wanting to disgrace her, planned to send her away secretly. |
AMPLIFIED 2015 | Matthew 1:19 And Joseph her [promised] husband, being a just and righteous man and not wanting to expose her publicly to shame, planned to send her away and divorce her quietly. |
Subject: What does "send her away" refer to? |
Bible Note: 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 |