spiritual discussionsThis is the place at AW for mamas to learn about all different religions and beliefs, to ask questions, to give answers- all done with respect! if you don't have anything nice to say here- don't say anything at all.
Why is it that it's taken as the original text by some people or some churches? It's not like it was written in that language by God himself. It's a translation. Some folks say "well, God wouldn't have allowed it if it were wrong" but if that's true, then He wouldn't allow all these other translations, either, if they're not OK. I think we've learned a lot about the nuances of the Biblical languages since the early 1600s. Some of the modern translations make so much more sense than the KJ errors such as teh whole "camel through the eye of a needle" thing which should actually have been a ROPE through the eye of a needle. Did anyone else ever wonder why on EARTH someone would come up with putting a camel, of all things, through the eye of a needle? Rope makes way more sense - still impossible to do, but not out in left field.
Anyhoo, does anyone know why the KJV is such a biggie with some? I don't dare take it up with people I know who feel like that for fear they'll think I'm trying to corrupt them or that I'm being blasphemous or something.
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Candace: Mama to Mollusc, Sluggie, Fishy, and the homebirthed Prawn!
P0F4X0
more of a literal translation. Therefore less of it is changed! I know some others are much easier to understand, so we have a variety of different versions and compare at times to understand the best way possibe. Hope that helps some! Tina
It's actually a very poor translation, as the translators were forbidden to depart from previous translations except in cases of very obvious mistakes. Therefore many obvious mistakes, such as "Thou shalt not kill" instead of "Thou shalt not murder" & calling Mary a virgin instead of a maiden, remained.
This particular translation exists mainly for two reasons. First and foremost is that King James wanted an "official" English version of the Bible. There was already an English translation of the Bible--but it was from (if memory serves) Switzerland. Secondly, King James wanted a version of the Bible that had a melodic sound to the words when read aloud. The translators were also instructed to use the best-sounding words they could, and part of the result of this was that the KJV uses many words that were archaic even when the translation was made.
(My source for most of the previous is a book called In the Beginning: The Story of the King James Bible and How it Changed a Nation, a Language, and a Culture by Alister McGrath.)
As to why some people believe it is THE translation... Y'know, I've been told, and I still don't get it. None of the "reasons" make sense on a Biblical or Apostolic level. The KJV Bible was initially a Church of England thing, but you won't find many Episcopalians using it these days.
Let me share with you:
Quote:
Satan knows that in a generation we won't uniformly quote the scriptures. Imagine ten people with ten different translations trying to recite a psalm together. Confusion. Satan knows that many newborn babes in Christ will not have the real milk that they need in order to grow because they'll have a watered down version of the truth. He figures that if he can't kill the babes, he'll do the next best thing-stunt their growth. At the same time the world will point to Christianity and say, "They don't even have a definitive word of God. Anybody can write a Bible." They already say that the Bible was "just written by men".
Being able to talk to a child of God and have our spirits commune on the parts of God's word that we've memorized is great. I now find people who are quoting scriptures that I know, but they are worded so differently that I have to ask the reference. This is confusion, and we know who authors confusion, the enemy of our souls, the Devil. I believe that the emergence of these many different "Bible" versions is Satan's most successful attempt to attack God's word. The Bible says that in the last days there's going to be a falling away of the church and I believe that these other versions are helping to usher it along.
She began to compare the KJV with these new Bible versions and came face to face with the fact that the new Bible versions' texts are changed to accommodate all religions and their ‘gods,' thus changing theology and removing the truth that will set people free
(I have not noticed this to be the truth myself...But hey, to these people I'm not really saved because I read the NIV.)
Quote:
One reason is that all the fifty or more translators who developed the King James Bible were godly men who believed strongly in the inerrancy and full authority of Scripture and who, therefore, believed in the literal historicity of Genesis, with its record of six-day Creation and the worldwide flood. This has not been true of many who have been involved in producing the modern versions.
There are a few common threads:
1) The KJV is the proper translation because it is the inerrant, uncorrupted word of God. Of course, that it is a translation that is based on a famously inaccurate translation means nothing. God snuck in one night and corrected their manuscripts.
2) Different versions of the Bible exist only to sow confusion, therefore all versions not the "authorized" version must be Satan-inspired, not God-inspired. (I suppose that Satan was rather busy during the Protestant reformation, when so much retranslation of the Scriptures was ongoing. The KJV is hardly the original even in English.)
3) The translators were Godly men, therefore their version is Godly. This presupposes there are a bunch of Pagans sitting around these days with nothing better to do than translate the Bible.
4) The KJV is easy to read. It supposedly has a 5-th grade reading level, based on the high number of one-and-two syllable words. Of course, that assumes that in the fifth grade we were all reading and comprehending William Shakespeare (Shakespeare's plays actually predate the KJV a bit, but they share much the same version of the English language).
Of course, my all-time favorite reason why the KJV is THE TRUE VERSION: Because it is the only one that claims to be. No, I am not making that up. I wish I was.
Not that I belong on this thread, but I'm going to give it a go anyway. Please feel free to disregard what I have to say .
Originally, when the Bible was translated the purpose was to be able to reach the 'masses'. At that time they all spoke Greek (check out: http://www.septuagint.net ). This, the septuagint was one of the original translations to a common language as fewer and fewer people spoke Hebrew (eventually Aramaic became the common spoken language of the Jews as well as numerous other peoples in the area - which is documentable today, for example in the Assyrians (who happen to be a nomadic Christian people ) whose language Assyrian happens to be very, very closely related to Aramaic - which in turn is closely related to Hebrew. In fact, my basic understanding of Assyrian is 'I can pick up a word here and there because it is so closely related'.
What the translators did after the Septuagint was translate the Bible from Greek to Latin. Their error was not returning to the original Hebrew. I'm sorry, I'm racking my brain right now to remember the name of the text which has the translations in order side by side- my original thought was the Septuagint. So, please, if you are willing to bear with me...the translation went like this: Hebrew to Greek, Greek to Latin, Latin to French (I think), then French to German, and lastly German to English. Never in their act of translating, did the translators of the time go backwards to double check their translating accuracy, thus allowing for a build up of errors from one language to the next. It, therefore, becomes clear why errors may have occured and why they slipped past unnoticed. Hence, the KJV Bible may, indeed, contain numerous errors that exist even today.
So, my humble suggestion would be that if one is truly interested in knowing what the Bible says, one must look back into the original language (Hebrew for the O.T.) and carefully piece together the appropriate translation.
HTH
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tyuipos?? NAK
Rivka; mother of A, N, and R & the twins
Rikva, this is exactly right. My church uses the sepyuagint as the starting point for all translations of the Old Testament. I am unsure as to what translation of the New Testament we use - I believe it varies. I found this out last year when we were chanting psalms during a vesperal service. We were chanting a psalm, but when I looked itup at home I couldn't find it. It seems that a psalm was left out of some versions, but it is in the septuagint.
I did find this in Wikipedia:
Sometime in the 3rd century BCE, the original Hebrew text of the Torah was translated into Koine Greek as the Septuagint. Over the next century the rest of the books of the Tanakh were translated as well; these translations were included in the Septuagint, and became the basis of the Old Testament for the early Church. However, later the Hebrew Masoretic text, which differs somewhat from the Septuagint, was increasingly used as a basis for the translation of the Old Testament among Western Christians (from Jerome's Vulgate until the present day). In Eastern Christianity, translations based on the Septuagint still prevail. Some modern editions also take advantage of insights from works found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. (For more information, see the entry on Bible translations).
The majority of Christians (including members of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches) include deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. These are a collection of books which were included in various versions of the Septuagint. The Roman Catholic Bible includes seven deuterocanonical books: Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), and Baruch, as well as six additional chapters in Esther and three additional chapters in Daniel. The various Orthodox churches include a few others, typically 3 Maccabees, Psalm 151, 1 Esdras, Odes, Psalms of Solomon, and occasionally even 4 Maccabees.
The earliest critical edition of the New Testament is the Textus Receptus (Latin for "received text") compiled by the humanist Desiderius Erasmus. It is largely Byzantine in character. The Textus Receptus was for many centuries the standard critical edition of the New Testament, only losing that position after the discovery of manuscripts such as the Codex Sinaiticus and the Codex Vaticanus. There are some who believe that many or all of the changes introduced by later critical editions are incorrect, and that the Textus Receptus is still the best critical edition available. A similar but distinct argument is sometimes made for the Majority Text.
Y'know, I've been told, and I still don't get it. None of the "reasons" make sense on a Biblical or Apostolic level. The KJV Bible was initially a Church of England thing, but you won't find many Episcopalians using it these days.
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