 The Bible was not written in English -- not even "King James English"! Most of the books of the Old Testament were originally composed in Hebrew (with a few portions in Aramaic), while the entire New Testament was originally written in Greek (although some books may also incorporate Aramaic sources). Thus, what most people today read is not the original text, but other people's translations of the Bible. But why are there so many different English translations of the Bible? And why can't churches or scholars agree on just one translation? - No original manuscript of any biblical book has survived! All of the texts written by the biblical authors themselves have been lost or destroyed over the centuries. All we have are copies of copies of copies, most of them copied hundreds of years after the original texts were written.
- The extant manuscripts contain numerous textual variations! There are literally thousands of differences in the surviving biblical manuscripts, many of them minor (spelling variations, synonyms, different word orders), but some of them major (whole sections missing or added).
- Important old manuscripts were found in the last 200 years! Recent discoveries of older manuscripts (esp. the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Codex Sinaiticus) have helped scholars get closer to the original text of the Bible, so that modern translations can be more accurate than medieval ones.
- The meanings of some biblical texts are unknown or uncertain! Some Hebrew or Greek words occur only once in the Bible, but nowhere else in ancient literature, so their exact meanings are unknown; and some biblical phrases are ambiguous, with more than one possible meaning.
- Ancient languages are very different from modern languages! Not only do Ancient Hebrew and Greek use completely different alphabets and vocabularies, but their grammatical rules and structures (word order, prepositions, conjugations of verbs, etc.) are very different from modern English.
- Every "translation" is already inevitably an "interpretation"! Anyone who knows more than one modern language realizes that "translations" often have meanings that are slightly different from the original, and that different people inevitably translate the same texts in slightly different ways.
- All living languages continually change and develop over time! Not only is "Modern English" very different from 16th century English, but the language used in Great Britain, America, Australia, and other countries are slightly different from each other (in spelling, grammar, idioms, word meanings, etc.).
- Cultural developments require new sensitivities in language! Recent awareness of the evils of racism, sexism, anti-Semitism, and other forms of discrimination have shown have certain language is slanted or biased, with corresponding efforts to develop more "inclusive" language alternatives.
Thus, no translation is "perfect" (none of them can be completely "literal" or 100% identical to the original texts) and there is no "best" translation (all of them have some advantages and some drawbacks). In general, however, the most recent translations (1980's or 1990's) are better than the older ones (esp. the KJV or the Douay-Rheims, both about 400 years old), not only since the English language has changed significantly over the centuries, but more importantly because of the ancient biblical manuscripts that have been discovered in the last 50 to 150 years which are much older (and thus closer to the originals) than the manuscripts that were available to the translators of previous centuries. *~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Conservatism: Self-centered mean-spiritedness fueled by ignorance and misguided self-importance.
Bigotry is a social disease.
Legalized same-sex marriage almost certainly benefits those same-sex couples who choose to marry, as well as the children being raised in those homes. - David Blankenhorn is president of the New York-based Institute for American Values and the author of "The Future of Marriage."
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11-24-2007, 07:00 AM
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