Bible translations with Dr. X.

[jetson]

Okay, apparently I hurt some peoples feelings around here. Was I being emotional? I don't think so. I was just calling you out.

I doubt that you have hurt anyone's feelings.  But what you have done with great success is to show that you are not in any way interested in any form of actual discussion.  You pointed it out very clearly when you pretended to want to know about Doctor's scriptural knowledge, and then exposed how that was never an honest request.  You can say it 1,000 times, but it will remain unconvincing until you drop the attitude and begin participating with some basic academic honesty.  Back up your claims with something real, if you can.

The Doctor, as well as many others will ALWAYS provide good references for where they get their information, and add, in their own words, why they accept that position.  Can you do the same, consistently?

[kcrady]

Interestingly, notice the change from the Deuteronomistic version--where YHWH orders the census . . . in order to squish David--YHWH is a king . . . kings do what they want . . . you do not take censuses and tax the wonderful Priests who are writing the Deuteronomistic History.  Even if you think YHWH is telling you to do so:

2 Sam 24:1-10 Again the anger of YHWH was kindled against Israel, and he incited David against them, saying, "Go, number Israel and Judah." So the king said to Jo'ab and the commanders of the army, who were with him, "Go through all the tribes of Israel, from Dan to Beer-sheba, and number the people, that I may know the number of the people." But Jo'ab said to the king, "May YHWH your god add to the people a hundred times as many as they are, while the eyes of my lord the king still see it; but why does my lord the king delight in this thing?" But the king's word prevailed against Jo'ab and the commanders of the army. So Jo'ab and the commanders of the army went out from the presence of the king to number the people of Israel. They crossed the Jordan, and began from Aro'er, and from the city that is in the middle of the valley, toward Gad and on to Jazer. Then they came to Gilead, and to Kadesh in the land of the Hittites; and they came to Dan, and from Dan they went around to Sidon, and came to the fortress of Tyre and to all the cities of the Hivites and Canaanites; and they went out to the Negeb of Judah at Beer-sheba. So when they had gone through all the land, they came to Jerusalem at the end of nine months and twenty days. And Jo'ab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to the king: in Israel there were eight hundred thousand valiant men who drew the sword, and the men of Judah were five hundred thousand. But David's heart smote him after he had numbered the people. And David said to YHWH, "I have sinned greatly in what I have done. But now, O YHWH, I pray thee, take away the iniquity of thy servant; for I have done very foolishly."

Move an Exile to rebuilding/building? the Temple . . . to the Chronicles.  David is not a bastard, Solomon is a swell-guy who does not "love foreign women" like he did in the Deuteronomistic History.  Sort of inconvenient to have a god that demands you do something so he can punish you for doing it.

So the Chronicler digs up a character.  In fact, he is our earliest representative of "Satan"--??n--???--[All they can see is question marks!--Ed.] as a proper noun--a name.  Before, it is always "a satan" or "the satan" and refers not only to a member of the Heavenly Council of the "sons of the gods"--as in Job and  Zechariah--but David refers to himself as a "satan" in 2 Samuel 19:23.  The Chronicler has to keep the story since it reveals the location where the Second/First? Temple should be built.  Thus:

1 Chron 21: 1-7 Satan stood up against Israel, and incited David to number Israel. So David said to Jo'ab and the commanders of the army, "Go, number Israel, from Beer-sheba to Dan, and bring me a report, that I may know their number." But Jo'ab said, "May YHWH add to his people a hundred times as many as they are! Are they not, my lord the king, all of them my lord's servants? Why then should my lord require this? Why should he bring guilt upon Israel?" But the king's word prevailed against Jo'ab. So Jo'ab departed and went throughout all Israel, and came back to Jerusalem. And Jo'ab gave the sum of the numbering of the people to David. In all Israel there were one million one hundred thousand men who drew the sword, and in Judah four hundred and seventy thousand who drew the sword. But he did not include Levi and Benjamin in the numbering, for the king's command was abhorrent to Jo'ab. But God [Ha Elohim—Ed.] was displeased with this thing, and he smote Israel.

Hmmm...  David's census seems to be about how many fighting men he has available rather than about taxes though--at least, taxation isn't mentioned.  Also, I'm guessing that the huge over-inflation of numbers is meant to make David's legendary kingdom seem all the more marvelous.  Is that right?  It seems to me it would be hard for the books' audience to believe that their country once had an army larger than that of the ginormous Persian Empire.  Heck, it's larger than that of the United States!  Impressive, for a tiny Levantine principality! 

As Forsyth notes:

Given the Chronicler’s pro-Persian stance and his political moderation, a revolution that is so compelling and dangerous is that last thing to which he would want to call his reader’s attention, and still less the ruthless methods provoked by that civil war among members of the holy family. But there was one sin of David’s that could not be passed over: the taking of a census. This episode could not be avoided, because its aftermath was the revelation of the site on which the temple was to be built, (Forsyth).

Could you explain a little more about what Forsyth is talking about?  What is the "revolution that is so compelling and dangerous" that the Chronicler is trying to suppress, and what does it have to do with the census?

[Doctor X]

Hmmm...  David's census seems to be about how many fighting men he has available rather than about taxes though--at least, taxation isn't mentioned.

In the story, but a census allows you to determine who may be taxed--further, whether or not men who may be under the priesthood may be pressed into military service.

Also, I'm guessing that the huge over-inflation of numbers is meant to make David's legendary kingdom seem all the more marvelous.  Is that right?

Absolutely correct.

It seems to me it would be hard for the books' audience to believe that their country once had an army larger than that of the ginormous Persian Empire.  Heck, it's larger than that of the United States!  Impressive, for a tiny Levantine principality!

They would like to think that . . . we are talking a few hundred years in the past.  It is almost like pretending there was a King Arthur and a magical kingdom of Camelot--with a nice young Helen Mirren wearing that [Get on with it!--Ed.].

Right . . . yes, but the time periods are similar.  Same with the whole Exodus-Conquest myth--nice to believe you kicked ass in the past. 

Could you explain a little more about what Forsyth is talking about?  What is the "revolution that is so compelling and dangerous" that the Chronicler is trying to suppress, and what does it have to do with the census?

He is describing the unsavory characteristics of David in the Deuteronomistic History [Samuel-Kings--Ed.]: stuff like Uriah, Bathsheba and, specifically, Absalom (Forsyth, p. 119).

--J.D.

[jtk73]

He can drop by my house in heaven anytime.

Why do you think that you will have a house? Why would you need a house if your physical body is rotting (or rotted) in a grave? What ideas do you have of heaven and why?

Is the Bible cryptic? Sometimes. Is there a reason for that?

Yes. It's make-believe.

The Bible is kind of like that. You can get salvation in a minute.

Salvation from what?

The rest of the Bible is just so we can explain things to Atheists, Mormons, muslim's, Hindu's etc.

Why should anything need to be explained to atheists, mormons, etc? If it the bible is the instruction manual to reach this 'salvation', why should anything need to be explained? Shouldn't any Joe Shmoe be able to pick it up and read for a few minutes and know exactly what they need to do?

Has the Bible been allowed to be edited/changed? YES and no. We have endless old manuscripts and scrolls to help keep things on track. Every good Bible translator should be aware of and using these resources. And I think they do.
Is there corrupt Bibles? Yes, the Jehovah Witnesses have a bible that has been drastically altered. If you are a JW and you just blindly accept this as the truth then that's your problem. At least check into the claims of the scholars for and against this shody workmanship. Then have a look at the organization that supports this New translation. You'll soon see all the problems that pop up as well as their prophetical errors throughout history.

It can't be yes AND no. It is either yes OR no.
Do you personally dig through these ENDLESS old manuscripts and scrolls to verify that you are getting the correct information?
Let me ask you this? Do you believe that the bible is divinely inspired and is the word of God? Do you believe that reading and understanding it is essential for 'salvation'?

If yes, then why would there be old manuscripts and scrolls.  Why would anyone need to 'keep things on track'? Why would anyone need to translate it at all? Why doesn't God use his magic to make this instruction manual clear and concise, impervious to corruption, not requiring interpretation or translation so that one need not rely on some other person's interpretation? We should each have our own magic exact copy of this instruction guide that instantly translates perfectly to the readers first language.

How is a JW blindly accepting 'their' bible as truth any different that you accepting your chosen version as the truth? Do you honestly think that the people that translated and copied your chosen version of bible did not let any personal beliefs affect how they translated and edited the copy that ended up on your bookshelf?

No, I do not stumble all over this book. The problem is I can only learn one thing at a time. Its just like watching a movie. Very soon you realize who the good and bad guys are, and what their goals are. Then just fit the pieces in where they belong. It can be a slow process. But its worth it.
That's why I come to you guys. I've run out of questions for the Bible. So I join you all in your questions. Sometimes I don't know the answer so I wait...Or admit God just isn't going to tell us yet. But all the important ones have answers already.

Ok.  Who exactly are the good guys in the bible. I certainly don't consider bible God a good guy.

Do the pieces fit in where they belong or do you (and other xtians) fit them where you want them to go?

By 'run out of questions for the Bible', do you mean that you have given up trying to make sense of it? I don't blame you.

I have posted this in other threads and I may have posted it in this thread already but I am going to post it again.

Bible god either..

doesn't care if we (humans) join him in heaven
OR
is extremely incompetent at getting his message across (among other things)
OR.....
He/it just does not exist.

Nonexistent seems the most logical to me.
If I am wrong and he doesn't care, then why should I?
If he is incompetent, then he is not all powerful, certainly is not worthy of worship and should be demoted to hall monitor.

[NFLJack]

Its interesting the Bible uses the phrase; It's easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle..."
That's kinda like raining cats & dogs. 

I feel the same way. It's been thought of as everything from literally an eye of a needle to a possible rock formation called "The Eye of the Needle" just to make it more palatable.

AND it wasn't an animal camel.  It was a cigarette.  I swear.  OK, maybe not.

[Jesuslovesyou]

Actually that means it's raining a lot not its raining hard so much for that post grad  this website inflates the ego of the college grad but in reality even the most intelligent person on this earth knows only a fraction of all knowledge. Oh and Greek  Hebrew and Aramaic aren't untranslatable in fact there's many many people qualified to translate them just because you can't decode three EASY Spanish words accurately doesn't invalidate the rest of human kind (:. Jesus loves you

KJV off the top of my head was altered to King James' wishes- hence it being called the "King James Version." I don't know exactly what was altered, just that some verses were changed to suit his needs. This would make it a CRAP translation.

NIV, as I was taught, went back to the original languages and translated it from there. IMO, this would make it a better translation than the KJV.

There are so many translations because some go word-for-word, and others go for idioms (common usage of words). An English example: "It's raining cats and dogs." A literal translation (into Spanish, because it's the other language I speak) would be "Está lloviendo gatos y perros" which is exactly what it says in English. This makes no sense in Spanish. An idiom translation would be "Está lloviendo mucho (or llueve mucho)" which means "It's raining hard." You can use something like translate.google.com, but it's very flawed. You can type "it's raining hard" in English and translate it to Spanish and get the word "duro" (something physically hard, like a rock) for hard, when the word "mucho" (much) is better. This is just the problem with 2 modern languages that millions of people understand.

Now imagine you are trying to translate these phrases in 2,000 years. How many people then are going to know the idiom "it's raining cats and dogs" to mean it's raining a lot? Into a language that nobody can imagine now, with words that don't exist now. That's what trying to translate the Bible is like.

[Vivisectus]

Actually that means it's raining a lot not its raining hard so much for that post grad  this website inflates the ego of the college grad but in reality even the most intelligent person on this earth knows only a fraction of all knowledge. Oh and Greek  Hebrew and Aramaic aren't untranslatable in fact there's many many people qualified to translate them just because you can't decode three EASY Spanish words accurately doesn't invalidate the rest of human kind (:. Jesus loves you

KJV off the top of my head was altered to King James' wishes- hence it being called the "King James Version." I don't know exactly what was altered, just that some verses were changed to suit his needs. This would make it a CRAP translation.

NIV, as I was taught, went back to the original languages and translated it from there. IMO, this would make it a better translation than the KJV.

There are so many translations because some go word-for-word, and others go for idioms (common usage of words). An English example: "It's raining cats and dogs." A literal translation (into Spanish, because it's the other language I speak) would be "Está lloviendo gatos y perros" which is exactly what it says in English. This makes no sense in Spanish. An idiom translation would be "Está lloviendo mucho (or llueve mucho)" which means "It's raining hard." You can use something like translate.google.com, but it's very flawed. You can type "it's raining hard" in English and translate it to Spanish and get the word "duro" (something physically hard, like a rock) for hard, when the word "mucho" (much) is better. This is just the problem with 2 modern languages that millions of people understand.

Now imagine you are trying to translate these phrases in 2,000 years. How many people then are going to know the idiom "it's raining cats and dogs" to mean it's raining a lot? Into a language that nobody can imagine now, with words that don't exist now. That's what trying to translate the Bible is like.

Sorry to hear you feel bad about never finishing college! Who knows, maybe some day you will go back and finish it.  I am also sorry you never figured out punctuation.

[Vivisectus]

Goldilocks

I figured if 1000's of Christian scholars have learned these languages and been translating Bibles for many years what could I possibly learn or offer that they haven't already mastered? Especially since people are often only as good as their teachers were.

So you submit to authority without doing a little research to see if your faith in that authority is justified? Sounds like the good old "questioning established biblical authority is pride" spiel to me.

[Graybeard]

In all fairness, 90% of what we know is as a result of the observations of others. Immortality is achieved when you discover something no one else knows and others test and then accept your argument through repetition. (Real immortality is to discover something and have a unit of measurement named after you.)

The case of languages is particularly true - http://www.lsadc.org/info/pdf_files/howmany.pdf

Much pioneering work in documenting the languages of the world has been done by missionary organizations (such as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) with an interest in translating the Christian Bible. As of 1997, at least a portion of the Bible had been translated into 2,197 different languages, still a long way short of full coverage. The most extensive catalog of the world’s lan- guages, generally taken to be as authoritative as any, is that of the Ethnologue organization (http://www.ethnologue.com), whose detailed classified list currently includes 6,809 distinct languages.

[Larissa238]

Actually that means it's raining a lot not its raining hard so much for that post grad  this website inflates the ego of the college grad but in reality even the most intelligent person on this earth knows only a fraction of all knowledge. Oh and Greek  Hebrew and Aramaic aren't untranslatable in fact there's many many people qualified to translate them just because you can't decode three EASY Spanish words accurately doesn't invalidate the rest of human kind (:. Jesus loves you

Christo te ama. Happy? I was a missionary in Mexico, so I know how to talk Bible in Spanish. My point with the translations is that there are many different ways to translate from one language to another, so your input on how my translation was wrong just proves my point even more. The way I translate an idiom is different from how you would translate it. Now apply that to a book that's thousands of years old, where we don't even know what is an idiom for their time. Add to that the bias that people translating it think it's the word of God, and yeah, you are going to get some pretty big changes from the original text (a la KJV).

JesusLovesYou, thank you again for proving *another* one of my points. This is the third thread I have seen you on, and I have either proved you a hypocrite and not a true Christian, or you have proved me right. All that in your 9 current posts.

[LadyLucy]

Actually that means it's raining a lot not its raining hard so much for that post grad  this website inflates the ego of the college grad but in reality even the most intelligent person on this earth knows only a fraction of all knowledge. Oh and Greek  Hebrew and Aramaic aren't untranslatable in fact there's many many people qualified to translate them just because you can't decode three EASY Spanish words accurately doesn't invalidate the rest of human kind (:. Jesus loves you

Comment in his own language, since he is afterall Hispanic and thinks himself the most superior in the Spanish language:

Si tienes algo que decir que va a ayudar a todos, por favor, has eso. Disiendole a Larissa de que ella no save su espanol suficientemente (y lo siento que no tengo los accentos y la letra enie) no ayuda. Diciendo "Jesus te ama" no ayuda tanpoco. Es como usas la frase para insultar indirectamente. Tu no eres mejor que nosotros solamente porque tu cres en un dios. Asi no se crea amigos, o construye un buen ambiente para debate. La universidad es bastante importante! Como puedes decir que no es tan importante? Es aburdo lo que tu dices. No tiene sentido. Mira pues; si tu sabes espanol mejor que mi, barbaro. Pero tu nisiquiera puedes escribir apropriadamente el idioma del que estamos hablando en este forum. Basta ya con tu idiotes.

Alright, I'm done. Too bad I can't check my grammar with the spell check here, but I think I did rather well.

[songpak3000]

Many people are unsure of which translation of the Bible they should choose to read out of.  Of the many modern translations of the Bible, none is actually 100 percent correct as far as literal meaning combined with conceptual translations of words and phrases.  That is why to accuarately understand passages, it would be beneficial to study the original Hebrew and Greek languages because they were written for those people at that specific time.  In the NIV, for example, there actually are many passages taken out of the Bible.  It is the same with the NKJV and even the NASB or ESV versions which pride itself on literal translations.  To make sure, we should have a Lexicon and/or Concordance to study the definition of the original language when reading passages.  The original Bible with all of its prophetic books and New Testament letters are 100% inspired by God and infallible.  So, if you do have a modern translation, you can read it and still grow spiritually in your walk with the Lord, but know that the modern translations are completely correct either. 

[Astreja]

The original Bible with all of its prophetic books and New Testament letters are 100% inspired by God and infallible.

I assert that "the original Bible," if it ever did exist, exists no more.  We do not seem to have any originals for the Old Testament, and we have yet to find the mysterious "Q" document upon which at least two of the Gospels appear to be based.

As for infallibility... You have got to be kidding.  You're talking about a book where snakes talk; where dead people come back to life; where a wooden boat built by an amateur shipbuilder (and filled with a preposterous number of animals) manages to survive rain falling for 40 days at a rate of 30 feet per hour.

You actually believe that nonsense?  Heeheeheeheehee!

[jetson]

The original Bible with all of its prophetic books and New Testament letters are 100% inspired by God and infallible. 

There is no "original Bible".  There is a compilation of writings, including books, letters, songs, and stories put together by humans over time.  And many of those originated by simple oral tradition prior to humans having a written language.  So, you are completely wrong when you claim that there is something that can be labeled an "original".  Not to mention that historical scientists have not concluded who all of the original authors were, or who they were speaking to during their time.

Also, consider the spread of time for all of the current "books" within the Bible, and consider that over that period of time, the individual authors most certainly did not know each other, nor were they commissioned to write specifically for "the Bible" as we know it today.  It was created by committees of humans, over vast periods of time.  And the NT is the worst of the lot in terms of which books made it into final publication, and which were tossed aside for reasons unknown to us (although we suspect they simply did not contribute to the story being compiled for "Christianity".)

Go read some Bart Ehrman.