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Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

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Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#111

Post by war1025 »

maxlybbert wrote: post #62
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 “to-read” list is too long, so I haven’t actually read it, but personally I’m interested in “The Art of Bible Translation” by Robert Alter.

Heard an interview with this guy on NPR about a year ago [1].

He made some comment about how he tried to make it more poetic than most translations. Then proceeded to give several examples where his translation sounded distinctly more awkward to me than the text he was replacing. For example, replacing "anoint" with "moisten" and "soul" with "life breath".

[1] https://www.npr.org/2019/01/14/684120470/after-24-years-scho...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#113

Post by mindcrime »

sjwright wrote: post #90
stOneskull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

It is almost impossible to imagine that the writings of any long-lived society would not have ample quantities of "timeless wisdom". In fact it would be striking and unusual if it were otherwise. Much wisdom can be difficult to stumble upon but is self-evident once known. Long-lived societies are sure to import all such wisdom from around them, then discover more for themselves over time.

Exactly. I'm pretty sure one can find "lots of timeless wisdom" in the Koran, the Bhagavad Gita, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Norse Prose Edda and Poetic Edda, the Necronomicon, etc., etc.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#114

Post by jazoom »

mindcrime wrote: post #110
mattigames wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to post some parts of the old testament that could be deemed the opposite of wisdom, but here we try to avoid flame-wars so I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about such controversial topics.

I ask for the same level of self-restrain from you when using adjetives about the quality of the bible and similar kind of opinions. Note that the person you're replying to did not say that the bible was ALL timeless wisdom, or really say much at all about the overall quality of the bible. There's no contradiction between the bible containing lots of timeless wisdom AND containing lots of utter nonsense and complete…

Yeah, New Testament is a fair bit nicer.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#115

Post by pram »

Nition wrote: post #50
xamuel wrote: post #27

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 me…

Over in the Old Testament, Ecclesiastes has a strong Greek philosophy feel to it. It's quite different from the books around it.

Ecclesiastes is one of the finest works of existential literature ever.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#116

Post by pram »

etxm wrote: post #105

Besides oil, what else has mankind killed each other over as much as religion? Edit: sensitive ass down voters that can’t ack their own bigoted bullshit. I was force fed the Bible for years. Read that shit, or “interpret it” as you will. It’s all contradictory bullshit. If god is so infallible why does his word change between versions? How can _you_ interpret it differently? Maybe because it was written but a bunch o…

God didn’t write the Bible.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#117

Post by etxm »

pram wrote: post #116
etxm wrote: post #105

Besides oil, what else has mankind killed each other over as much as religion? Edit: sensitive ass down voters that can’t ack their own bigoted bullshit. I was force fed the Bible for years. Read that shit, or “interpret it” as you will. It’s all contradictory bullshit. If god is so infallible why does his word change between versions? How can _you_ interpret it differently? Maybe because it was written but a bunch o…

God didn’t write the Bible.

See “bunch of assholes” above

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#118

Post by [deleted] »

schoen wrote: post #46
RandomTisk wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a small but very convinced group that believes that the King James Bible is "perfect", preserved by God to be the only true scripture for Christians. This is just my opinion, after many hours of researching this phenomenon myself: They mean well, but they're very wrong. The translators of the King James Bible themselves, specifically and without ambiguity stated in the introduction to the KJV that it's impor…

> The translators of the King James Bible themselves, specifically and without ambiguity stated in the introduction to the KJV that it's important for scholars to update the texts from time to time to allow current culture to understand what ancient writers meant. Wow, I don't think I had seen this before. I think you're probably referring to this section: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C.…

[deleted]

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#119

Post by debbiedowner »

Interesting comment that there is evidence for the translators working independently.

A curious fact is that in 1610 Shakespeare was 46, and in Psalm 46 you will find 46th word from the beginning put together with the 46th word from the end is Shake spear. (Start counting at line 1 excluding the directions and Selah)

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#120

Post by jcranmer »

gerbilly wrote: post #51

Does anyone know whether or not the language of the king James bible was typical of early 17th century English? I heard that the translators use archaic expressions no longer commonly used in 1604 for stylistic reasons.

The KJV does consciously use phrasings which were on their way out in several places. The most notable is hefty use of the singular second-person (thou), which was in decline at the time (somewhat akin to `whom' in modern speech); this was done to distinguish where the original texts used singular or plural second-person.
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