My brother has done some work translating the bible into languages for remote tribes in New Guinea. There was a tribe that lived in the mountains and had never seen the ocean. All their water came from mountain streams that had very few fish in them, and no fish bigger than a minnow. They had no idea that people ate fish in other parts of the world. This made much of the gospels completely foreign to them, since Jesus’s world was built largely around fishing, his disciples were fishermen, etc… How do you translate “fishers of men” into that language?
Also, snakes were a staple of this tribe’s diet. That made the verse “Which of you, if your child asks you for a fish, would give him a snake?” kind of awkward. How do you translate that? It makes the most sense to them if you switch it around and translate it backwards. But do you put quotes around it?
Seems like an all-powerful god writing a perfect book shouldn’t have any of these kinds of problems.
The problem is that a literal translation loses meaning for a modern reader. I’m focused on Old Testament Hebrew here. The verb tenses are not what we think of as tenses. There’s past completed, past incompleted, and future. Being verbs are usually omitted, leaving ambiguity to a modern reader whether the verb is present or past. The famous opening words are, literally, “In-the-begining create [tense unclear] God [direct object indicator] the heavens and the earth.” The most common translation is “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” but equally possible is “At the beginning of God’s creating the heavens and the earth…”
There are puns. E.g., Gen 2:5 (KJV) “…there was not a man to till the ground.” The word for man/person here is “adam” and the word for ground is “adama.” There’s a poetry/rhyme/pun in the Hebrew that vanishes in the English.
Another problem: in ancient Hebrew, a repetition of an adjective or verb was used to make it emphatic. This doesn’t read well to the modern reader. For instance, Gen 15:13 (KJV) “Know of a surety…” The KJV also uses “verily” to imply this emphasis. But the literal Hebrew is “Know, knowing.,”
The Everett Fox translation (sadly, only of the Pentateuch, the first five books of the bible) tries to be both literal and to keep the poetry. He does this by including Hebrew words in italics after the English, and by tricks like using “You must know, yes, know…”
For instanc
The word in Hebrew is “yarech,” which means “thigh.” While the genitals are in the thigh area, it is definitely used in the non-genital context. Genesis 32:33 refers to the sciatic nerve - not a body part specifically associated with the genitals, except for general proximity - as being “al kaf hayarech”, in the hollow of the thigh.
It is true (according to Jewish tradition) that the genitals - specifically, the area of circumcision, which was a direct commandment by G-d to Abraham - are the reason Abraham and his descendants specified the thigh as something sacred on which to solemnify an oath. However, the translation “thigh” is not a mere euphemism, it is an accurate translation.
Once you realize there are no first generation copies out there, it becomes moot on the accuracy of a modern translation. The accuracy of any copy of the bible is an excercise in faith. All we have is statistics to assume a reasonable and small rate of error. We just take it on faith that the early copies/translations we’ve found didn’t vary too much from the original.
Please accept this as a sincere question, but when discussing which translation is the most accurate, is there agreement as to exactly what material is being “translated”?
I am an atheist - raised catholic - and certainly not a bible scholar. But my understanding is that the old testament was translated from the Hebrew into Greek some time BC, and the modern Bible was “codified” in the 4th century. Do modern translations accept these, or go back further to more historical materials?
So when talking about translations, exactly what is the source material that is being translated?
Considering that there are plenty of available Jewish translations directly from the Hebrew, does it really matter? You don’t have to deny Jesus Christ to read the Old Testament using a volume published by Jews.
Shirley forgets that this God has left and will return later, so why wouldn’t the other side make as big a mess as they can of the Word in the meantime? Don’t blame Shakespere if someone changes all the words and meaning long after he is gone, in other words
Maybe I don’t understand the question, but no, there is not agreement (entirely) on what constitutes the canon of Scripture. As I mentioned above, Catholics include the Apocrypha, while Protestants do not.
But that’s a Latin root, and Polycarp was talking about the Old Testament, which was not written in Latin. Hebrew, being Afro-asiatic, is not even in the same family as Latin.
I think the question is whether there’s a (or several) generally accepted source texts for modern translation. That is to say, do modern translations all generally start with the same or similar base versions, interpretation of those texts providing for the differences, or do they select different texts to translate, meaning that differences may arise from the original texts being different. Not so much agreement on what constitutes canon, but what versions of canon are agreed upon as being a fair basis for translation.
Silverstreak, if that’s the case, remind me again why I should believe anything in the bible? Since by your own admission men are screwing it up as much as possible- in fact, how do you know you’re saved? What if some man waited until god left and then completely changed the requirements for salvation?
The oldest extant manuscripts are the Codex Vaticanus and the Codex Sinaiticus, neither of which is older than the 4th c. However oldest does not necessarily mean ‘most accurately transcribed’ or ‘most complete’ - both contain omissions, obvious copying errors and missing fragments.
The Jewish manuscripts would have destroyed in the Roman destruction of Judea in AD70 and Jews were forced to reconstitute them from memory.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, some O.T. books, some non-canonical writings, date from 150 BC to around AD70. All are fragmentary and none seem to have radically changed our view of the text.
It shouldn’t matter, unless you contend that it is beyond God’s abilities to make every version of the Bible completely and unambiguously clear to every reader no matter what language he understands. Do you?
Just to take the one religion I am most familiar with, my understanding is that at some point in the 4th century the catholic church decided what constituted “the Bible.” At that time, did they offer an accepted translation? Or did they simply agree which “books” should and should not be included, leaving various interested parties to offer their own “translations” of the source material?
I guess here’s another slightly different (and undoubtedly stupid) question - when was a certain set of teachings first referred to as “the Bible”? And by whom?
On the contrary, man is not capable of inventing a language as perfect as Hebrew, which G-d wrote the Torah in. Either you learn it on G-d’s terms, or you translate it to the best of human ability into a less-perfect language.
1)If man lacks the ability to understand God’s word, whose fault is that? Man did not create himself, did he?
2)Who said anything about inventing a language?
Surely a more perfect language would be one that is understood equally well by all, and
Why does language even matter? If God wants us to understand him, he can make it happen, can’t he? Is it beyond his capabilities to make his words understood by all?
And by what logic do you call Hebrew perfect? What does a language being “perfect” even mean? And what evidence do you have that Hebrew is anything other than just another human made language? What evidence do you have that humans can’t make another language as good or better ( whatever “better” may mean )? And which version of Hebrew is the perfect one; I’m sure it changed over time and region, just like every other language.