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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

#191

Post by eru »

Cthulhu_ wrote: post #176
sjwright wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right; the main way that the bible (and by extension religion) is important in this regard is that it's survived, in various forms, for as long as it has. I kinda believe you need a religion to preserve knowledge and wisdom like this for so long. I mean tangentially related, a while ago there was an article about how to safeguard nuclear waste storage for the next 100.000 years; one suggestion was to create a…

> I kinda believe you need a religion to preserve knowledge and wisdom like this for so long.

Depends on how high you set the bar for 'survive'.

We have a few of the writing of Euclid, Archimedes and other Greeks, and mostly they weren't preserved for religious reasons.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#192

Post by eru »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #168
nemosaltat wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC Tyndale was burned at the stake for his efforts.

You can understand why, the meaning of the NT goes pretty hard against established religion as it cuts priests out of the loop entirely. It also has a very strong, communist/shared wealth message. If you're rich or powerful and don't believe it would be anathema. Letting just anyone read that ...

Compare https://slatestarcodex.com/2019/07/08/gay-rites-are-civil-ri...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#194

Post by goto11 »

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #165
goto11 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That is kind of a myth. For example the concept of Hell and eternal punishment is from the NT.

Can you point out where it mentions eternal punishment? AIR from my reading I see absolute destruction vs living with God, but not Dante's inferno by a long shot.

Well Dante is a completely different thing, but the NT describes eternal suffering in fire e.g. in the story of Lazarus and the rich man. https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+16%3A19-31...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#195

Post by Jaruzel »

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.

> This is one of those rare HN moments that I wish more would notice.

Sorry to cut in... but I concur. Sometimes you read comment that makes you think 'wow this person is so similar to me!' but it's a single comment in the middle of a thread and that connection ends up being fleeting.

Hacker News' de-emphasis on Users (i.e. no avatars or extensive profile, or direct messaging) is one of its strengths as it forces the focus into the public discussions; but it can also be frustrating when you do stumble over a like minded person.

Personally, I'd like to see a sanctioned way to build on the HN community via other more real-time platforms, which ultimately could lead to proper friendships with real-life meet-ups etc.

Yeah, I'm a dreamer, I know.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#196

Post by gwd »

mistrial9 wrote: post #57
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?

What was taught at a USA top-10 University class on the first day was.. Christian teaching can be grouped into two groups.. one interprets the Bible as historical, allegory, divine guidance and ethical wisdom but not literally true, and the second is.. the Bible is literally the Truth of God, end of sentence. The former groups tend to be the better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a co…

> the Bible is literally the Truth of God, end of sentence. The former groups tend to be the better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a constructive way.

Your taxonomy is too simple. :-)

There certainly are Christians who seem to focus only on verses in isolation, without considering even the context of the surrounding verses, much less the cultural and historical context into which they were written. But there are others who think that taking the Bible seriously requires taking the historical and cultural context into account; that God did speak, but he spoke to a specific set of people in a specific circumstance; so if you want to hear him speak clearly, you have to go back and put yourself in the shoes of the original hearers. People who take this kind of approach are are both "better educated, more literate and more capable of critical thinking in a constructive way", and believe the Bible to be "literally true" -- at least at literally as the author intended it to be taken literally. :-)

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#198

Post by yati »

vixen99 wrote: post #184
ginko wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Didn't Orwell have a point when he contrasted a verse from the KJ version (antiquated!) bible with his own modern (' a parody but not a very gross one') version. "I returned and saw under the sun, that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding, nor yet favour to men of skill; but time and chance happeneth to them all." "Objective…

I'm not a native English speaker. To me, your first excerpt is much more understandable: I can automatically form the abstraction given these examples, whereas the second excerpt, although more general, is honestly harder to "hammer" into the brain. But I think that is because the second version is not just modern language, but also more abstract.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#199

Post by C1sc0cat »

war1025 wrote: post #111
maxlybbert wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-s…

Um "anoint" and "moisten" have very different meanings in English.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#200

Post by C1sc0cat »

tyingq wrote: post #24
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.

Um not sure about all of those being "technically" "Christian"
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