This is one view, the other is that the Bible has one author, that being God.
But, after thinking over the subject, I have reconsidered a bit, it may be helpful to have a neutral translation to compensate for the man made religion aspects that sometimes filter out matters of God based faith. Though I would rather have a unbiased computer translation then a one that was done by someone who is anti-God.
:eek: Are you suggesting that there are people out there who think God sat down with a pen and a stack of paper and wrote the bible? I grew up in a fundamentalist southern baptist church and even they did not think that. They believed all kinds of other crazy stuff like god planted dinosaur fossils to confuse atheists but even they did not suggest that God was the actual author. Devinely inspired sure, but not authored by God.
Among the 10’s of thousands of fragments there are pieces of every book in the “Old Testament” except for the book of Esther. Having said that, I believe that the only substantially complete Canon book among the scrolls is Isaiah
–—QUOTE -------------
Now identified among the scrolls are 19 fragments of Isaiah, 25 fragments of Deuteronomy and 30 fragments of the Psalms. The virtually intact Isaiah Scroll, which contains some of the most dramatic Messianic prophecy, is 1,000 years older than any previously known copy of Isaiah.
We have pretty hard science that all of these scrolls were written during the period from about 200 B.C. to 68 A.D.
So when were these Books first written? A staff report would tell us that the fragments of the Pentateuch was probably (being conservative to avoid debate) 800 years written by that point, Judges kings etc. were still probably about 400 years prior to this and all the prophetic books prior to Daniel about 150 years before the DSS were written.
Only the Book of Daniel’s latest generally agreed upon dating range could be contemporaneous with the earliest possible dating of the DSS.
There are no New Testament Books in the Dead Sea Scrolls
I’ve run into such people; written by God, complete with red letters for what Jesus said. Generally the sort who also think that Jesus was a tall blond man who spoke English.
Something I just googled : An amusing collection of related quotes about people back for a century or two insisting that the Bible was originally written in English.
No, are you suggesting that a being that created heaven and earth, knew exactly where you will live before He created it, knows how many hairs are on your head and is in control of everything is incapable of giving us a book from Him through us humans?
Ahhh, but can he make a book so goofy that even he would not believe it? On a serious note if God knows all that stuff why is he always getting pissed and smiting people and throwing them out of gardens and flooding them and smoting their tall buildings and making them speak different languages. If he knew they were going to do all that stuff why get pissed when they do it. I know free will and all that rot. Fine, for some reason free will means we will do things god doesn’t want, but that doesn’t explain all the times he gets “sorely wroth” I mean if you know something is going to happen and it does only a loony gets mad…
I get the impression that the god the hebrews were talking about was not the same reading the future god you are talking about.
No, because an atheist doesn’t regard the Bible as a sacred or authoritative text and has no motivation to massage the translation. An atheist doesn’t think the Bible “should” say anything in particular. Speaking as an atheist who who has studied Biblical Greek, I can say that when I do my own translations, all I care about is accuracy. The theological implications make no difference to me because I don’t believe any of it anyway. What bias do you think an atheist could possibly have about “what the Bible should say?”
To me, translating New Testament Greek is like translating Homer. It’s all just ancient mythology to me. I have no agenda. I’m not going to get upset because Paul says that Christ is Lord any more than I’m going to get upset about Homer saying that Zeus is.
It goes without saying that kanicbird’s assertion that religious faith implies special abilities to translate ancient texts is, at very best, witnessing material not suited for GQ and is supported by nothing substantive.
I’m not aware of any official “atheists’ translations” of the Bible, though some atheists have probably worked on the some of the standard English language versions. I don’t believe that religious faith is a requirement to be commissioned as a translator. It really makes no difference to the accuracy of the translation. Ambiguities or variances in the texts are settled by comparisons to other texts and consensus of manuscript experts. Personal theological beliefs do not play into it. People who insert personal faith and dogma end up with bad translations.
Athiesm does not mean anti-God. It means not believing that God(s) exist. That’s very different. To go back to my first analogy, I don’t believe in Marxism or Freudianism, but I have no problems reading about those two fields and understanding every word of it.
By the way, an excellent book about Bible Translations is Misquoting Jesus. I found it shocking and informative. And not that it matters 
but the author comes in to the topic as a true believer.
Diogenes, my point is that no one can translate any document - religious or not - without approaching the text with their own bias of the author and topic. When you have to take a word in ancient Hebrew, Greek, Latin or Sanskrit and choose an English word or phrase from a selection of possible legitimate meanins, your personal bias is going to come into play no matter how neutral you try to be. You have to use your own understanding of the text (and related texts, and other manuscripts) to select the closest modern equivalent.
And it’s not just selecting vocabulary - it also applies to selecting grammatical structure and punctuation, which is absent from ancient biblical languages. I’m not saying translators intentionally skew the text to fit their preconceptions; but I am saying that translators - regardless of their agenda - put some of “themselves” into every translation.
So I think the OP suffers from two fallacies: one, that a translator (or more commonly a committee of translators) who approach the bible from an attitude of faith are less reliable than a dispassionate translator; and two, that a dispassionate or atheist translator is, or can be, completely unbiased.
Does someone who does not believe in Greek mythology have a personal bias which does not permit them to accurately translate the Iliad?
Translating the Biblical manuscripts isn’t really fraught with that much difficulty. It’s not as ambiguous or interpretive as is being represented here. The real difficulty comes in deciding which manuscript sources are more accurate and reliable, not in translating them. For the most part, fithor lck of faith are not releveant to a process which is almost always collaborative and relies on consensus anyway.
I’m not saying that a bias either way prevents one from doing an accurate translation; I’m just saying that an atheist is not necessarily less biased.
And I agree 100% with your final statement - almost all reputable Bible translations are done by large committees comprised of scholars from multiple denominations and faiths (or no faith), so any questionable interpretation or bias held by an individual translator is subject to correction by the larger consensus anyway.
Now, when you get into Bible commentaries, all bets are off…
Speaking of commentaries, can someone recommend me a good one? What I am looking for is an annotated bible that identifies key contradictions, points out things that are often thought of as contradictions but are not, and gives a lot of context in order to help with interpreting the original author’s intention. Something along the lines of a text that would be used in a “bible as a work of literature” class at a good university.
Basically, the kind of text that would give me the sort of information given in the “who wrote the bible” article by one of our esteemed SDSAB members. Hmm, come to think of it, I bet he had a bibliography that might be a place to start.
Flight, You should first read that Misquoting Jesus book I referenced. It has a lot about what you want, and will set the stage for whatever else you find.
Another good book (no pun intended) is
Isaac Asimov’s Asimov’s Guide to the Bible: A Historical Look at the Old and New Testaments
As an atheist I found this book incredibly interesting.
It’s been a long time since I gave up religion, but from what I remember the Hebrew Torah DOES use punctuation at the end of a sentence. It’s a minor point – the other things you said are definitely accurate – and I could be wrong, but I’m pretty sure of the end of sentence punctuation. Can anyone confirm?
I’d recommnd getting a New Oxford Annotated Bible and a good introduction to the New Testament. I second Muttox’s endorsement oEhrmen but would suggest starting with his The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings to more fully satisfy what you’re looking for.
Other recommendations would be The Bible Unearthed, Friedman’s Who Wrote the Bible? (for a good overview of the Documentary Hypothesis), and Asimov’s Guide to the Bible (the latter is a bit dated but still a good introduction to the historical context of the Hebrew Bible.
Speaking of translations copies and which source is correct. I just went to the dead sea scrolls travailing exhibit that is in San Diego currently. The exhibit had a display about how the tale of David and Goliath is different in our current New Testaments (and current Torahs) than the one in the dead sea scrolls. They say that the one word in one line where they say how tall Goliath was was copied wrong some where along the line (I don’t know who copied wrong the traditional copies or the dead sea scroll copies). Before the dead sea scrolls were found he is over 9 feet tall and in the dead sea scrolls he around 7 feet. 6 cubits and a span vs 4 cubits and a span.
Thanks, I will start there.
So Inquiring Minds want to know- when does the DtC NT translation finally surface? I know that if I knew Greek, I’d be working on one!
Interesting idea. I’ve done my own translationsof individual verses here from time to time, but I never thought of trying to do the whole thing. Maybe I’ll try it. It would be a good exercise for me, both in terms of my Greek skills and my NT knowledge. t would take a while, but I think I might just take a shot at it. Thanks for the suggestion.