Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered • Hacker News Board

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#21

Post by xamuel » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

burlesona wrote: post #7

amerine wrote: post #3

Do religious groups in the US, specifically, Christians, talk about the history of the King James Bible? Why is it, uh, trusted by so many, when stuff like this hints at a storied construction?

I don't think it's widely trusted. Translations are hotly debated, but I think most people consider the KJV to be a poor quality translation, besides the fact that even if it had been a quality translation at some point the language has changed enough that it's no longer very helpful for a modern english speaker seeking to understand the original greek and hebrew texts.

Something subtle that's easy to miss is the fact that the original text did not contain quotation marks, and neither does the KJV. There are places where by introducing quotation marks, the translator necessarily must make decisions which the original text does not support.

Take for example one of my favorite sayings, Matthew 24:15-16.

ESV: "So when you see the abomination of desolation spoken of by the prophet Daniel, standing in the holy place (let the reader understand), then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains."

KJV: When ye therefore shall see the abomination of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place, (whoso readeth, let him understand:) Then let them which be in Judaea flee into the mountains:

The quotation marks in the ESV suggest that the parenthetical phrase "Let the reader understand" was spoken by Jesus. But in actuality, it is ambiguous whether that was spoken by Jesus, or whether it is a note by Matthew. Was it Jesus telling us to understand Daniel, or Matthew telling us to understand Jesus? And if it was the former, did Jesus say it knowing that someday it would be read (even though no stenographers were present) and would thereby gain a double meaning?

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#22

Post by sb057 » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:53 PM UTC

Crontab wrote: post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

My personal preference (for accuracy, anyway) is Thomas Nelson's "The Expanded Bible", which provides alternate and literal translations, as well as important commentary (such as "wind" and "spirit" being the same word in Greek). No deuterocanon, unfortunately!

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#23

Post by stOneskull » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

mc32 wrote: post #8

Obviously it’s interesting to religious people and people who study religion. But, on top of that it’s an important document of the English language at that time. So it’s got linguistic interest as well. But that’s the case for many historic religious texts. One has to do with religion the other is the linguistic aspect. Of course there are other areas of interest like culture and so on.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#24

Post by tyingq » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:58 PM UTC

amerine wrote: post #3

Do religious groups in the US, specifically, Christians, talk about the history of the King James Bible? Why is it, uh, trusted by so many, when stuff like this hints at a storied construction?

It's too fragmented for that to really be a first class concern. "Christian" is a broad class that encompasses LDS, Jehovah's Witnesses, Presbyterian, Baptist, Catholic, etc. We have no shortage of controversy and conflict to debate about.

On this particular topic, I'd be more interested in the Italian opinion.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#25

Post by gerdesj » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

BuildTheRobots wrote: post #13

"Good evening. Here is the news on Friday, the 27th of Geldof. Archaeologists near Mount Sinai have discovered what is believed to be a missing page from the Bible. The page is currently being carbon dated in Bonn. If genuine it belongs at the beginning of the Bible and is believed to read "To my darling Candy. All characters portrayed within this book are fictitious and any resemblance to persons living or dead is p…

I never find that taking the piss out of someone who I disagree with enough that I have to write it up on the internets and resort to coming across as a bigot is a good idea.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#26

Post by galaxyLogic » Thu, Oct 24, 2019, 11:59 PM UTC

I think it's kind of ironic that people argue over which version of Bible is the most accurate because all of them contain so many contradictions.

Can a text be 'accurate" if it is full of contradictions?

https://www.atheists.org/activism/resources/biblical-contrad...

There are many other examples: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Biblical_contradictions

"Although explanations can resolve the contradiction, they present problems for literalists who speak of the "clarity of Scripture." "

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#27

Post by xamuel » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 12:00 AM UTC

It's a pity so few people realize that beside all the usual stuff (love or hate it) that society associates with the Bible, the Gospels contain discourses of Jesus which are genuinely brilliant purely in their own right as philosophical works.

"And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward." (Matthew 6:5)

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#28

Post by samstave » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

Why do we care about the bible at all.

We expect textt books to be updated regularly.

We expect software to be updated regularly.

Why is a bible exempt? Fuck jesus. Fuck Mohamed. I dont care about either of these guys if they can even update or be truthful in their respective works.

Heck, i trust stephen king and joe rogan more than either of them.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#29

Post by elihu » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 12:05 AM UTC

amerine wrote: post #3

Do religious groups in the US, specifically, Christians, talk about the history of the King James Bible? Why is it, uh, trusted by so many, when stuff like this hints at a storied construction?

I think for some the issue is that if you consider the Bible to be absolute and without error, then the logical conclusion is that the first available translation is the right one and you can't have others that conflict. If, say, NIV conflicts with KJV in some way, then if said that the NIV was right it means the KJV is wrong, and for some people that's yanking out a key pillar of their epistemology.

Another aspect of it is that the modern translations are all copyrighted, whereas KJV is public domain. One criticism I've come across of modern translations is that sometimes they use convoluted ways of saying something just because they don't want to be accused of plagiarizing some other modern translations, and there are only so many ways to write the same sentence. I'm not sure if that's a real issue that Bible translators actually worry about, but it's at least plausible.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#30

Post by schoen » Fri, Oct 25, 2019, 12:06 AM UTC

gbear605 wrote: post #18

Crontab wrote: post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

There is no consensus since “the most accurate” isn’t a single goal. For instance, you could try to translate word-by-word, but then you’ll lose a lot of idioms. Or one translation might well preserve the poetic nature of a part of Genesis while leaving out the understanding of what specifics the poetry referred to. One commonly acclaimed translation is the ESV, which I’m familiar with and like the translation of, bu…

I know it's outside of the academic translation studies conversation, but I really enjoyed Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton Beau de Marot, which contains dozens of translations of a single French poem, to emphasize how difficult a task translation is, how many different ways of doing it there are, and how many different purposes it can serve.