And of course it makes perfect sense that “anyone who who was favored or chosen by God or who was especially righteous” would be somehow genetically different so that their offspring would be referred to a “nephilim”. In Job “sons of God” means angels, period, unless you think that it was righteous men that appeared before God with Satan or righteous men that shouted for joy when the foundations of the earth were layed. You have a strange concept of your own religion (I assume that you are Jewish?). Either way, this applies to all of you who think that you need to consult 20 different translations along with a Hebrew and Greek (Latin, Aramaic etc) dictionary just to understand the scriptures that your religion is based on. This is foolishness. I would not be real impressed with a God that could not preserve his own word (or allow such a “bad” translation as the KJV to hang around for so long).
The KJV was the only Bible for close to 300 years. None of these modern translations have ever been the only Bible. Do you realize how counter productive that is? You can’t debate with anyone because people refuse to agree on the source. You can’t say “The Bible” because people will say “which one?”. You can’t decide on an actual meaning because after searching through 20 translations and conducting searches through hebrew and greek dictionaries, you have increased the number of words that can be twisted or “pondered” over from just a few to a few hundred for any given passage. In effect you people have no scripture. You just have a pile of translations that might be scripture and you can pick and choose what you like or just choose to remain confused on certain issues by convincing yourself that with a better understanding of Greek or Hebrew or with a new upcoming translation it will all be revealed to you. This is pure FLUFF™. Without scripture there is no authority, nothing can stated as a fact because you see each translation as a piece of a giant never ending puzzle.
I guess, despite Paul’s words, God is the author of confusion.
I can’t go and respond to everyone who has posted since I last did because this site is taking like a half hour to load a page, if it loads it at all. I’ll check back on this thread tonight or something.
And of course it makes perfect sense that “anyone who who was favored or chosen by God or who was especially righteous” would be somehow genetically different so that their offspring would be referred to a “nephilim”. In Job “sons of God” means angels, period, unless you think that it was righteous men that appeared before God with Satan or righteous men that shouted for joy when the foundations of the earth were layed. You have a strange concept of your own religion (I assume that you are Jewish?). Either way, this applies to all of you who think that you need to consult 20 different translations along with a Hebrew and Greek (Latin, Aramaic etc) dictionary just to understand the scriptures that your religion is based on. This is foolishness. I would not be real impressed with a God that could not preserve his own word (or allow such a “bad” translation as the KJV to hang around for so long).
The KJV was the only Bible for close to 300 years. None of these modern translations have ever been the only Bible. Do you realize how counter productive that is? You can’t debate with anyone because people refuse to agree on the source. You can’t say “The Bible” because people will say “which one?”. You can’t decide on an actual meaning because after searching through 20 translations and conducting searches through hebrew and greek dictionaries, you have increased the number of words that can be twisted or “pondered” over from just a few to a few hundred for any given passage. In effect you people have no scripture. You just have a pile of translations that might be scripture and you can pick and choose what you like or just choose to remain confused on certain issues by convincing yourself that with a better understanding of Greek or Hebrew or with a new upcoming translation it will all be revealed to you. This is pure FLUFF™. Without scripture there is no authority, nothing can stated as a fact because you see each translation as a piece of a giant never ending puzzle.
I guess, despite Paul’s words, God is the author of confusion.
I can’t go and respond to everyone who has posted since I last did because this site is taking like a half hour to load a page, if it loads it at all. I’ll check back on this thread tonight or something.
And of course it makes perfect sense that “anyone who who was favored or chosen by God or who was especially righteous” would be somehow genetically different so that their offspring would be referred to a “nephilim”. In Job “sons of God” means angels, period, unless you think that it was righteous men that appeared before God with Satan or righteous men that shouted for joy when the foundations of the earth were layed. You have a strange concept of your own religion (I assume that you are Jewish?). Either way, this applies to all of you who think that you need to consult 20 different translations along with a Hebrew and Greek (Latin, Aramaic etc) dictionary just to understand the scriptures that your religion is based on. This is foolishness. I would not be real impressed with a God that could not preserve his own word (or allow such a “bad” translation as the KJV to hang around for so long).
The KJV was the only Bible for close to 300 years. None of these modern translations have ever been the only Bible. Do you realize how counter productive that is? You can’t debate with anyone because people refuse to agree on the source. You can’t say “The Bible” because people will say “which one?”. You can’t decide on an actual meaning because after searching through 20 translations and conducting searches through hebrew and greek dictionaries, you have increased the number of words that can be twisted or “pondered” over from just a few to a few hundred for any given passage. In effect you people have no scripture. You just have a pile of translations that might be scripture and you can pick and choose what you like or just choose to remain confused on certain issues by convincing yourself that with a better understanding of Greek or Hebrew or with a new upcoming translation it will all be revealed to you. This is pure FLUFF™. Without scripture there is no authority, nothing can stated as a fact because you see each translation as a piece of a giant never ending puzzle.
I guess, despite Paul’s words, God is the author of confusion.
I can’t go and respond to everyone who has posted since I last did because this site is taking like a half hour to load a page, if it loads it at all. I’ll check back on this thread tonight or something.
Yu do realize that your first sentence, here, has no basis in fact, right? Every European language has had a bible for a very long time. In addition, the Greek-related Churches had a version of the New Testament in something close to its original form and the Old Testament in a pretty good rendering of the Septuagint for many hundreds of years. There are also several version of the bible used by other groups in the Middle East and Northern Africa that date back well over a thousand years. (And, of course, the Jews had an actual Hebrew version of their Scriptures.) In addition to which, the KJV was not even the only English version as the Douai-Rheims version is quite nearly as old as the KJV and there have also been several other version floated about, although with far less currency.
As to the reason that the KJV did tend to be the dominant (although not the sole) translation in English, that had quite as much (or more) to do with politics, both religious and state based, as it ever had to do with scholarship.
Actually, there are several ways to deal with this perceived problem.
One way is to hunker down with a translation that can be shown to have many errors, simply because one’s parents used it. I’m not sure exactly why one would want to look to a book with known errors and claim that one has been handed divine authority in a broken vessel, but if it makes you happy, I can’t stop you.
However, a different way to seek Divine authority in the context of Scripture is to see it as a repository for the core of one’s beliefs without ascribing to it some magical properties of expressing all of God’s wisdom or intent. The Orthodox and Catholic churches take similar approaches in which they view Scripture as the place where the key elements of God’s plan have been encapsulated, but recognize (in their view) that God also speaks through the Magesterium of belief as expressed in the Councils. (And while one can dismiss the Councils as mere politics, the rejoinder would be that the Councils settled on what, exactly, Scripture entailed. To dismiss the Conciliar approach for that reason exposes Scripture to the same complaint. One can, of course, object to the Conciliar approach for other reasons.)
A still separate way to look at your problem is to dismiss it as irrelevant. Many people have expressed the idea that we do not need some blind “authority” which is subject to constant corruption and misinterpretation as the language inevitably changes, leaving the older texts and their translations to confuse future generations.
Or you can choose the KJV which definitely isn’t scripture.
I’ll take the “possibly correct”, rather than the “definitely wrong”, any day.
No shit. And that, in effect, is that. There is no such thing as “Scripture”. The sooner everyone realizes this simple fact, the better the world would be.
“Fact” is that which can be proven. Since there is very little in the Bible which can be proven (in any translation), the Bible contains very little “fact”.
God is the author of nothing. Man creates his own confusion.
[ quibble ]
One may question or deny the existence of God (or gods) or the reality of divine inspiration or the reality of inerrancy or any number of other theological constructs, but there very clearly is “Scripture” which indicates the “Writings” that are held sacred by people who believe. That there are numerous challenges to the provenance and accuracy of those writings does not make them disappear.
[ /quibble ]
You’re welcome. If you’re interested in a lively version of Job, I recommend Mitchell’s. He includes 20, or so, mostly fascinating pages of notes on the translation.
“Sons of God” can refer to angels but it can also refer to human kings, judges or prophets as well as to Israel as a whole. The exact meaning of the phrase as it applies to the “nephilim” in Genesis is not known with any real certitude. There’s a pretty good chance that it’s a remnant of pre-Judaic, polytheistic mythology. (“Satan” in the Job story is not the equivalent of the Christian Devil, btw, so he’s not “unrighteous.” His job is to challenge God. That is his purpose.)
I’m an agnostic but I was raised RCC.
For the purpose of discussions in this forum we generally regard “scripture” as being most definitive in the original Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek texts. We may have debates on how best to translate something or which translated versions are best but it is generally accepted that the original text should be taken as more authoritative than a translation. If a question is asked a bout the “behemoth” passage in Job, it is only reasonable to try to find the original meaning of the Hebrew. If there’s a question about the meaning of something in the New Testament it is fairly routine to check the Greek texts. Why should I bother with a translation if I can dig up my Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament and read the original words of the author? I’m mystified by your insistence that a translation that is known to be flawed should take precedence over the original text. The origininal texts are the Bible.
Well humans were the authors of the Bible, humans were the translators and humans are the interpreters.
You are correct of course. Replace “scripture”, with “a divinly inspired, inerrant, written Word of God”, and perhaps my statement would be more accurate.
The fact that a group of people believe something to be true doesn’t make it so.
Well, if Stephen said it, it must be true. :smack:
“It is important to note that Stephen Mitchell is an agnostic, perhaps atheistic Jewish-Buddhist, what author Rodger Kamenetz (The Jew in the Lotus) calls a “JUBU.” In Mitchell’s account of Jesus’s life, there is no God and no resurrection of the dead; there are no miracles, few healings, and no angels or demons. His materialistic/psychological approach completely disregards the power of faith to convey truth. For instance, Mitchell uses Thomas Jefferson as a source for understanding Christian scripture. This is a bit like using the Pope as a source for understanding Buddhism. Jefferson was a typical product of the Enlightenment, a non-Christian who sought to strip the Gospels of soul, divinity and mystical reality, and to make human reason god. Mitchell’s method of critiquing Christian texts by consulting only the “inner evidence” of his intuition, is occasionally interesting, but one wonders why he doesn’t simply ask Christians about their own experience, in their own terms. His arrogant, and contentious approach lacks empathic curiosity of those who are different than himself.”
I know Stephen Mitchell from his translations of and commentaries on Chinese texts like the Tao Te Ching. He’s fairly well respected and I see know reason to dismiss a translation just because he doesn’t believe in magic and fairies.
“Mitchell’s method of critiquing Christian texts by consulting only the “inner evidence” of his intuition”
Yes, I can see how this is whining, and totally not applicable. And since he is well respected, no need to question his findings. And obviously if he’s done commentaries on the [be]Tao Te Chin[/be] he’s an expert. Silly me. I don’t really care if he doesn’t believe in magic and fairies, as I don’t really either, but wouldn’t that make his findings possibly a bit bias if he doesn’t believe in the spirit world, angels or God, as he’s already gone in not believing what’s written?
We’re not talking about criticism, we’re talking about translating. What does believing in God have to do with whether he can translate from Hebrew to English?
Did you even read the post where I quoted Mitchell? It was about the translation of Job. The text. The man knows his Hebrew (and his German, Spanish, and about six other languages). And, if you’ll read the post, you’ll notice that Mitchell refers to the work of translators and commentators who have preceded him. One of whom I failed to mention was Moses Maimonides, a 12th century Biblical and Talmudic scholar, and author of The Guide for the Perplexed. I think it’s safe to say that Mitchell is a fairly reliable source.
So what is your own experience with the behemoth’s schlong then?
If a translation is valid, and this one does make more sense, I don’t see how a person’s lack of faith has any bearing on the subject.
Are only true Christians capable of translating hebrew?
What is it you are saying here?
