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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

#151

Post by lsc »

mattigames wrote: post #109
stOneskull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

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.

so, uh, you probably weren't aware of this (I know I wasn't until fairly recently when I made a similar comment and a jewish friend pointed this out) but many jewish people consider speaking casually about how the new testament is good/ the old testament is bad to be pretty offensive. The gist I think of what my friend was telling me was that if I took the time to understand the jewish scripture, all of the stuff about loving your neighbor, feeding the poor, etc... is already in those jewish scriptures that prefigured the new testament- I mean, that's just scriptural interpretation, which I am not really qualified to get into - but the offensive bit is that casually dismissing the old testament as bad while praising the new testament as good can come off like saying "the religion my ancestors had has a more moral holy book than the religion your ancestors had" and it's pretty easy to see how that could give offense.

(I mean, I'm not a bible scholar; just... it was, you know, one of those times when I unintentionally gave offense, and seems like something you should be aware of if you are trying to avoid flame wars.)

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#152

Post by lsc »

schoen wrote: post #130
schoen wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another commenter elsewhere in this thread just mentioned the Preface to the KJV, which includes some specific criticism of the Catholic Church (referred to as "our chief adversaries") for (at the time) disapproving of vernacular language editions of the Bible. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C... .

I misunderstood a detail here: this section admits that the Catholic Church sponsored an English translation (the Douay-Rheims Bible) but complains that this translation was itself made in response to pressure from Protestants, and that Catholics were expected to seek permission from church authorities in order to read it. So I probably shouldn't have said "disapproving of" but rather something like "grudgingly permi…

I actually had no idea that the catholic church permitted an english translation so early.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#153

Post by goto11 »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #148
stOneskull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

Such as? I'm struggling to imaging something recorded in this draft that is useful, and not already known? A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious.

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#154

Post by goto11 »

crgwbr wrote: post #133
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?

I’m personally a fan of the New World Translation [1]. It was first released in English, but has since been released in about 160 other languages as well. [1]: https://www.jw.org/en/library/bible/study-bible/books/

Is that the Jehovas Witness translation? The word Jehova is itself a mistaken translation.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#155

Post by simonh »

nemosaltat wrote: post #137
chrismorgan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it with Tyndale’s translation from about eighty years earlier (normalising the spelling of both), and, where they vary, Tyndale’s is normally the easier to read and understand. Tyndale intended that the ploughboy could understand the Scripture, while the KJV was “appointed to be read in Churches”. (Most of the time they do not differ substantially, as the KJV drew most heavily from Tyndale’s translation.) See…

IIRC Tyndale was burned at the stake for his efforts.

Strangled to death and then burned, apparently.

For those not familiar with the period, Tyndale was executed during the reign of Henry VIII, while England was still at least nominally a Catholic nation (Henry's relationship with Catholicism is complicated). At that time Catholicism was opposed to translations of the Bible into local languages and translation was a politically and theologically charged issue. In this case, Tyndale translated certain terms in such a way as to undermine various Catholic principles and doctrines. For example using the term Congregation, implying the Bible was referring in certain passages to the Christian community as a whole, instead of the term Church which was associated specifically with the institutions of Catholicism.

King James was a protestant ruling about 70 years later, so had no problem with an English language translation, and in fact this was an opportunity to cement the basic language of protestant Biblical interpretation in the minds of the English people.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#156

Post by drukenemo »

DEADBEEFC0FFEE wrote: post #148
stOneskull wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also has a lot of timeless wisdom

Such as? I'm struggling to imaging something recorded in this draft that is useful, and not already known? A lot of timeless wisdom is also obvious.

It’s obvious exactly because it has been already incorporated as values in our societies.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#157

Post by emmelaich »

tyingq wrote: post #79
emmelaich wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All those and more. Except for the 3b2. Not much Tcl.

Karnac says you're 54ish and from the Northeast US or Ireland or maybe UK ;) I suspect not US, which makes the shared experience more interesting, as the world in general wasn't particularly very global at the time, yet we have a remarkably shared experience (I'm EU born, US bred). Yay early (late 80's / early 90's) Internet. This is one of those rare HN moments that I wish more would notice.

What is karnac? A brief websearch was not enlightening.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#158

Post by ginko »

haskal wrote: post #104
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.

The bible is by far the most translated text (and a reasonably sized one). I just wish it wasn't written in a weird way. I learned a little bit of Korean by reading the bible as the primary source and when I tried to speak, I only got weird looks. I get why. It is like someone asking you "How art thou?"

I find it a bit weird that people stick with such antiquated translations of the bible in English. The German translations are pretty much standard German. Even the Luther Bible is quite readable to this day.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#159

Post by [deleted] »

nemosaltat wrote: post #137
chrismorgan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare it with Tyndale’s translation from about eighty years earlier (normalising the spelling of both), and, where they vary, Tyndale’s is normally the easier to read and understand. Tyndale intended that the ploughboy could understand the Scripture, while the KJV was “appointed to be read in Churches”. (Most of the time they do not differ substantially, as the KJV drew most heavily from Tyndale’s translation.) See…

IIRC Tyndale was burned at the stake for his efforts.

[deleted]

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#160

Post by dang »

sjwright wrote: post #95
sb057 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What if something from Judaism or Islam was discovered etc Why would HN readers care about this? Apparently so: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18895717 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21128804 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15546761 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20856121

But to be fair, this is the discovery of an earlier draft of a translation of a book. It's not exactly a cultural moment that directly intersects secular life like all of the examples you have cited above.

The King James Bible is a classic of English literature and history. It has intersected massively with secular life for centuries.
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