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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: 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 |