Accuracy of Bible translations - couldn't the Bible you're reading be, well, wrong?

Great Debates
1

The following quotes from this thread got me wondering about the accuracy of Bible translations and the beliefs/consequences thereof. The quotes below focus on the debate of whether one needs to accept Jesus to be saved, or if one only needs to not reject him.

The point of this, then, is basically how can we know that translations of the Bible to English (or any other language) are 100% correct?

IANA Biblical scholar, nor have I read the Bible, nor am I religious, and lean towards agnosticism. I post this mainly because it made me think. Since this is GD, and I guess I’m supposed to start a debate, I’ll say this:

*The chance of errant, mistaken, or inaccurate translation of the Bible through the ages makes it impossible for any absolutes to be formed, and therefore invalidates anyone from knowing with certainty that their understanding of what the Bible says is 100% accurate. And an important consequence of this is that those who believe it is their right/mission to attempt to indoctrinate others with their beliefs are, well, wrong to do so. *

Now, of course, probably 99% of the translation is right (or close enough), but the fact that the way something as fundamentally important as to who gets saved may be mistranslated should make us all wonder.

For instance, if the basic tenet of an evangelistic Christian attempting to convert me to Christianity is that I must accept Jesus to be saved, but the translation of the Bible is incorrect and the “actual” Bible says only that I need to not reject Jesus, then these particular people are actually perpetuating a falsehood. (which, of course, is not very Christian :D)

Let me make it clear that I am not bashing evangelicals here, nor would I want this thread to turn into that. And this topic can easily include books of other faiths. I’m sincerely interested in hearing what people think about how the potential mistranslations of the Bible (or Koran etc) should affect how people act.

(Side note: I did a quick search and didn’t see any topics on this, but if this has been recently discussed feel free to point me in that direction).

2

When the Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published, it caused a lot of commotion. People objected to “changing the Word of God.” (“Don’t mess with the King James Version! If it was good enough for Jesus, it is good enough for me!”

I have read from time to time that Biblical scholars continue to shed new light on possible translation errors. We have only to look at a few threads at GD to see how quickly words and meanings can be misinterpreted.

I agree with your accessment. As a Christian, I try to look at the teachings as a whole rather than trusting in the judgment, however inspired, of a bunch of guys with questionable motives who argued about interpretations and inclusions over sixteen hundred years ago.

3

I think the whole idea is that God helps the translators. In other words, God helped the writers originally, and he helps the re-writers now. As long as you think those men are worthy, it’s a good translation.
Personally, I think the revised editions are much easier to read, but are much flatter, without the richness of meaning I get from the KJV. Then again, it may just be what I’m used to reading.

4

From something I posted elsewhere:

5

[…shrug…]

Just teach yourself Hebrew and/or Greek and translate it yourself.

6

Well, this doesn’t exactly answer the question as I’m wondering about how people handle the fact that the translation to, say, English may be incorrect. Not how to get a better translation, but what they think about their beliefs/actions if it’s based on a potential inaccurate wording.

To my mind, a slight difference.

7

Well, it’s just a book. There really isn’t anything to handle unless you believe that salvation is from the book. Give God a pure and loving heart. If He desires more than that, then He doesn’t deserve to be God.

8

So if God helps the translators, how do we reconcile these differences? Is God indecisive, or forgetful? Does history change between the time God helps translator A and translator B?

9

“You strain out gnats and swallow camels.” — Jesus

(I’ve verified the translation.)

10

I posted this on another message board, and thought I’d share my two cents here as well:

**So, bottom line, I don’t become overly concerned with parsing words from various translations (though I do find it interesting). It’s also why I don’t find most arguments supported solely by a foundation of “But the Bible says this” to be terribly satisfying.

11

+1
its more what does Jesus say we should DO and BE?
and WHY?
like those capitals!:smiley:

12

I’m a Christian and translator. Yes, translators make mistakes! This is why, in addition to my usual version of the Bible, I’m also very interested in other translations and what the original Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and other languages say. I also know that if I were a translator who had the job of translating the Bible, you’d better believe I would be praying. In a few days, I’m going to be getting a couple of new concordances from friends who are moving. I’m looking forward to reading more information on verses I take for granted.

That said, I don’t believe the Bible is incorrect. I believe that the Bible itself contains Truth, even though the way various verses are written vary from translation to translation to reflect language shifts and biases over time. As an example, at the time the King James Version was written, the word, “suffer” as in Luke 18:16, “Suffer little children to come unto me” meant “allow”, instead of “feel pain or distress.” Dictionary.com does list “allow” as the 4th definition, but, unless I was hanging out with my friends in the SCA, I wouldn’t expect anyone to use it in that sense nowadays. The essential meaning of that verse, particularly if one is aware that at that time and in that culture, children were regarded as property at best, remains.

Also, it’s my duty as a Christian to read, think, and discern. Christ came into a world which had changed radically since Moses was given the Law. He was aware that a whole set of strictures had grown up around that Law, and, no disrespect to Judaism intended, one of the reasons He was here was to draw human beings back the the essential, rather than literal meaning of the Law. I’m quite sure He was sensible enough to realize that the world would continue to change, and, since part of His work was to spread the awareness of God beyond Jewish culture, I’ve no doubt He knew His words would be translated by fallible human beings. Time and again, He focussed on the spirit of the Law, not the letter of it. Read, think, understand, which are, I understand, perfectly compatible with Jewish tradition.

Hmmm. After all of this, I suppose I could argue that, if one believes the Bible is literally true and infallible, then what one is really saying is that the group of translators who wrote one’s preferred version of the Bible were infallible. Then again, that’s one heck of a can of worms, and I’m in no mood to go fishing!

CJ

13

But wouldn’t the Truth be immutable? If the Bible is really the Word of God, doesn’t that mean that at one point in time the Truth was written down, or captured, on paper? And does that not mean that the words (whether Hebrew, Greek, Aramaic) of the original document are the one true representation of the Truth, and that there really is no ‘spirit of the law’?

As far as the translators being infallible, that may very well be part of this debate.

Again, how do we reconcile the example I gave in the OP?

14

Concerning the Koran, it’s quite easy : only the arabic text is authoritative, and any translation is regarded with suspicion. It’s just not the real stuff. IME a quote from a translation of the Koran is essentially never taken seriously. It certainly makes sense. More sense at least than believing that god made sure that the translation was perfectly accurate (theorically, this expectation is logical, but as soon as there is more than one translation available, you’re facing a big problem).

15

I would note that it’s Islamic doctrine that the Koran is untranslatable; that all translations must be described as “interpretations” rather than actual representations of the Word. This causes problems, as the Arabic of the Qu’ran is, at this point, archaic and spoken only by scholars, which means that the average Muslim on the street has to trust that their holy men are telling them what it actually says. (A bit of trivia that might make a difference to your average Islam-related flamewar.) I believe something similar is part of Judaism, but it’s also my understanding that training in the language in question is fairly common.

Language is contextual, and driven by culture. These things spin the concepts that are presented within language, and unless one wants to posit that a single people of a single time period had the sole correct culture, I’m not willing to posit that they did not put an interpretation on the truths they encountered. (And I think the idea that a pre-scientific and racially and sexually divided culture being the sole correct one is a little silly.) The King James translators claimed divine inspiration, and I think that was more political expediency than fact, and certainly believe it to have been hubris.

I need to brush up on my New Testament Greek before I speculate about the text more specifically; I can muddle through on the Classical Greek I have with some help from a dictionary, but I can see the word-meaning-shifts and am well aware that I might be missing important nuance due to simple lack of fluency. (And while I have copies of both the Qu’ran and the Tanakh in their original languages, I don’t even have the beginnings of an ability to fake reading those at this point.)

16

**Lilairen wrote:

Language is contextual, and driven by culture. These things spin the concepts that are presented within language, and unless one wants to posit that a single people of a single time period had the sole correct culture, I’m not willing to posit that they did not put an interpretation on the truths they encountered. (And I think the idea that a pre-scientific and racially and sexually divided culture being the sole correct one is a little silly.)**

This is, IMHO, an important point, as important as translating the words of the text themselves.

What was the intent of the writers? Which audience were they addressing? Why were they writing? The original documents that comprise the New Testament were written decades after the events they describe. We’re not even really sure who wrote them. Also look at the social events happening during the time they’re being written. The Gospel of Mark was written just before or at the very end of the Jewish rebellion. Matthew and Luke were written a decade or two after that and John even longer.

For a very interesting version of this, please read Elaine Pagels, The Origin of Satan. She give, IMHO, a very lucid account of the social situation in which the Gospels were written.

FWIW, I do believe the words of (the J/C/I) God are in the New Testament, but they have been filtered thru the perceptions and experiences of the writers. It is necessary to consider each verse and figure out if it’s the writer who’s speaking or (the J/C/I) God.

17

The Bible is a written down version of a collection of folk legends and oral histories of the Hebrew tribes. All of the extant Greek and Hebrew sources have doubtless gone through many hands before coming to us. So your method doesn’t do any good either.

According to Man and His Gods, Homer W. Smith (Little, Brown and Company) the oldest surviving Hebrew manuscript is a copy of the Prophetic Books at St. Petersburg (formerly Leningrad, formerly St. Petersburg) dated at 916 C.E. Parts of other books were found in the Dead Sea Scrolls and I don’t know the current state of that study. In any case, in all likelihood those scrolls were also the product of a lot of hands with greater or lesser skill and devotion to accuracy as opposed to presenting a point of view.

You just can’t get there from here.

18

Nearly all observant Jewish people (pretty much everyone except those who became religious as adults) receive intensive training in Biblical Hebrew from the age of five or six. For example, I’m not fluent per se, but I certainly understand most of the Torah pretty well, although I have more difficulty with the most poetic passages. (And yes, I’ve read the Torah, in Hebrew, cover to cover.)

Since Hebrew wasn’t spoken as anyone’s native tongue for (conservatively) fifteen hundred years, and was then revived based on the Biblical and on other ancient texts, modern Hebrew’s closer to Biblical Hebrew than modern Arabic is to Kuranic Arabic. (I don’t speak Arabic; this is second-hand.) It’s as though the Kuran were written in Chaucerian English, and the Torah in something between Shakespeare and Jane Austen. It’s archaic, but still intelligible without much special training.

19

As in interested amatuer, I was not aware that any texts existed in Aramaic. Would you be so kind as to clarify?

20

Some of the names of persons in the New Testament are in Aramaic (Cephas, aka Peter, Tabitha, etc.) Also, I believe that Jesus’s dying words “Father, father, why have you foresaken me” are in Aramaic.

UnuMondo