That makes it even worse. Because the passage then means the child is to be executed.
It’s more complicated than they say. It’s just certain words in the New Testament (which are traditionally translated as sodomy or homosexuality), where no death penalty is mentioned. It appears to be about Greek pederasty, but it does blame both of those involved.
The other stuff (including the Old Testament) is usually interpreted to be about idolatry and sex cults, especially Romans 1.
Jesus reached out to the disenfranchised of that time and loved them. He would do the same today. God is all about love. Today that includes LGBTQIA2S+, perhaps especially so.
I would be very interested to know just who, exactly, considers the New American Standard Bible to be more literal than Young’s Literal Translation.
From the example the OP gave, I suspect he might be interested in the Cotton Patch Version of the New Testament.
What’s your basis for saying this?
Short version- we are allowed to change how we interpret the Torah. We are not allowed to change the original words. So it would be perfectly acceptable to change the English translation from ‘And Moses spake, saying unto the Midianites’ to ‘So Moses said to the folks from Midian’. Jewish law is constantly applied to the modern world (and especially modern science) so adding asides about license plates would be fine so long as you backed them up with cites.
Apologies, wasn’t meant that way.
There are quite a few interesting Bibles (sometimes just the New Testament or other parts of it) that are worth looking at. Being a Catholic Baby Boomer, I was brought up on the Douay-Rheims translation. But I lived in a society that used the King James version as its go-to text. So my family Bible, for instance, talked about Noe, but the culture around me talked about Noah, to give one obvious but trivial example. By the time I was a teenager, the Catholics were using The Jerusalem Bible, which was a translation from the French of a new translation from the oldest texts. I decided that I wanted a direct translation from ancient sources t English, so I bought The New English Bible, even though it wasn’t an approved Catholic version.
Besides those, I’ve picked up a copy of The Jefferson Bible, where the third president tried to cut out any miraculous or dubious portions from the Evangelists and put together a single work on the life and philosophy of Jesus. The Smithsonian now sells a version that’s a photoduplicate of Jefferson’s original.
There’s also the Bible translation that Joseph Smith was working on to bring the translation more in alignment with the beliefs of the LDS Church. It’s been puiblished, but I don’t have a copy.
Reader’s Digest published its own “Condensed” version of the Bible. RD is famous for its “condensed books” series, and at first glance a “Condensed Bible” looks like a wag’s joke. But it’s a real thing, and apparently serves a real need.
As a reader and lover of annotated books, I like annotated commentaries, and there’s no shortage of these for the bible and individual books of the bible. I’ve got Asimov’s Guide to the Bible, which seems kind of random and scattershot – the Bible is such a huge book, with so much cultural association, that you could spend a lifetime annotating it. I have the Pelican Bible Commentaries on the Evangelists, which go through dissecting each freakin’ sentence bit by bit. Worth reading, at least once. I also have a couple of the Anchor Bible Commentaries on some individual books of the Bible (like Jonah and Esther – two really short books, but the comments make the volumes books of appreciable size).
Did Matthew write it? Really?
Dan
Current biblical scholarship consensus is that the disciple of Jesus named Matthew is not the author. This is because this gospel is based largely on the gospel of Mark, who was not one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples. Mark himself is posited to be a gentile Christian, probably an associate of Peter, who wrote his gospel in about 70 AD, for a gentile Christian audience.
That does not mean Matthew is not canonical.
Included because it’s an amazing thing to see, not as a jab at the Bible itself: The Brick Testament-someone did the entire thing in Legos (or a very similar building block.)
Yes it’s the Scriptures in LEGOs. https://theBrickBible.com
Never seen that one before.
And then there’s the LOLCat Bible.
Here’s how I see the OP: the quote is already from a translation that is in pretty good understandable modern phrasing. They just insert in one line a very specific case example that is itself only relatable to a society that has customized license plates, or bumper stickers and that would be entirely out of place for a quote from a Galilean street preacher’s sermon in 30AD.
So it’s basically taking a commentary footnote about applicability in specific cases, and putting it in the mouth of the character. They could just put it in brackets and placed it as that, as in: “[Note, for example that would include quoting the prophets in your license plate]”
As mentioned earlier, most serious theological traditions already take into account commentary, paraphrase and “living document” interpretation, and “today’s language” paraphrases adapted to the audience’s culture are not uncommon.
Inserting a specific take on our favorite issue so it appears that Moses, Elijah, Jesus or Paul himself makes our point for us in the verse and chapter of a “canonical” version is not really necessary.
Feel free to add your comments about the Torah, if there are any muslim dopers who wish to add comments about the koran, those are welcome also, I just didn’t feel right including something that isn’t mine.
Ah. I meant of the translations that are most commonly used. The NASB is used by many scholars and some churches; the YLT is, at best, an auxiliary study aid.
It is clear that the history and authenticity of recensions and redactions of currently canonical texts is a complicated subject demanding meticulous scholarship, but even a superficial reading proves that the early authors did definitely not imagine changing or corrupting their words was cool.
E.g. in Deuteronomy ch. 4 we have something like
at least referring to commandments. Similarly, authentication of ahadith is a major field of study in Islam.
As for the Qur’an specifically, it should be noted that there was a great effort (e.g. under Uthman) precisely to create an official and uniform written version of what was originally oral literature.
Eli by Bill Myers, a Christian novel, tells the story of what may have happened if Jesus hadn’t come in the first century but had come to modern America. It’s actually an interesting book. Instead of telling Peter to put down his nets for a catch right there, he tells him what pitch to look for on a softball field, for example. Instead of five loaves and two fish, it’s unlimited Burger King burgers.