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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

#221

Post by ImpressiveWebs »

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?

Read the book “Truth in Translation” by Jason BeDuhn[1]. He examines, IIRC, 7 different Bible translations and shows why many have translated specific passages in a biased manner. And he more or less declares a “winner”, with some caveats. It’s a really good, down-to-earth read that’s not too technical in terms of language discussion.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Truth-Translation-Accuracy-Translatio...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#222

Post by ensignavenger »

gwd wrote: post #216
ensignavenger wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What did he suggest was changed about it?

So this is literally 20 years ago now (plus or minus a month) we had this conversation, and I'm not sure I 100% understood what he thought even then. What he said was something like that Islam says that when you're attacked, you should be strong defend yourself; and maybe let the other person know that you're not weak. So I guess he thought that this contradicted what Allah said elsewhere (through Mohammed), and ther…

Thanks! I can understand where your friend is coming from. I think if you polled most Christians (a least most that I know) you would find that most of them believe it is fine to defend oneself or at least take oneself out of harms way. So even though 'turn the other cheek' is such a common phrase in our culture and most Christians are well aware of this saying by Jesus, they don't interpret it literally. Most would say it means to forgive those who do evil towards you and not take revenge against them. I think the original saying has some cultural connotation of a strike on the cheek being more of an insult than a physical attack, but I a not an expert. (Though this article supports this idea: http://learntheology.com/turn-the-other-cheek.html)

Now, in Muslim culture (I am again not an expert) it may be that they teach a more strict sense of a right to take revenge/justice on those that do them harm?

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#223

Post by Terretta »

jlos wrote: post #142
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 studied Greek, Hebrew, and Bible translation for an undergrad, so I'll toss my two cents in. Accuracy depends on what your aiming for. There are two schools of thought on modern english translations, dynamic equivalence and formal equivalence. Formal equivalence tries to maintain as much as possible the linguistic and syntactical features of the original languages and will often prefer to leave ambigous language or…

If you want to aim for the epic feel of, say, Tolkien, try the New English Bible (“NEB”) from the dynamic equivalence school, which reads like literature and formats poetry as poetry.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_English_Bible

Tolkien was at Oxford in 1925 - 1959, and wrote The Hobbit and LOTR during that time frame.

NEB was kicked off in Oxford and Cambridge in 1946.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#224

Post by gwd »

ensignavenger wrote: post #222
gwd wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So this is literally 20 years ago now (plus or minus a month) we had this conversation, and I'm not sure I 100% understood what he thought even then. What he said was something like that Islam says that when you're attacked, you should be strong defend yourself; and maybe let the other person know that you're not weak. So I guess he thought that this contradicted what Allah said elsewhere (through Mohammed), and ther…

Thanks! I can understand where your friend is coming from. I think if you polled most Christians (a least most that I know) you would find that most of them believe it is fine to defend oneself or at least take oneself out of harms way. So even though 'turn the other cheek' is such a common phrase in our culture and most Christians are well aware of this saying by Jesus, they don't interpret it literally. Most would…

> So even though 'turn the other cheek' is such a common phrase in our culture and most Christians are well aware of this saying by Jesus, they don't interpret it literally.

Jesus often says things hyperbolically to shock people enough to get them to think outside their boxes. It's a bit like that quote from Suits: “What are your choices when someone puts a gun to your head? ... You take the gun, or you pull out a bigger one. Or, you call their bluff. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things.”

In certain cultures, if you're insulted or attacked, people feel like they basically have to respond in kind. But this sets up a cycle of violence: someone attacks you, you "have" to attack them; but then they "have" to attack you back, and so on until one of you is more or less destroyed. (Furious 7 probably unintentionally demonstrated this perfectly: both the main hero and the main villain were revenging attacks done by the other on their own family.)

Saying "Turn the other cheek" is basically along the same lines as the gun quote: "What are your choices when someone smacks you in the face? ... How about this: You turn the other cheek. Or you ignore it and move on. Or, you do any one of a hundred and forty six other things. You don't have to respond in violence."

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#225

Post by blotter_paper »

vinceguidry wrote: post #201
yati wrote: post #198

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept. Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

I agree that this is what's being expressed, but I think I'd have an easier time revising KJV than Shakespeare. The pieces of translated bible that I have read didn't come anywhere near the complexities of Shakespeare. I don't think anyone would read/accept my revision, but I think it would be more beautiful in the eyes of most English professors.

"I returned. Under the sun I saw that the race was not for the swift, nor the battle for the strong, nor the riches for the wise men; time and chance affected all."

Not a major departure, and it could certainly be improved upon, but it's more to the point while still showing the reader rather than just stating the point, and the repetitious bit in the middle has been paired down to three parts with a slight variation on the last repetion upending expectations while not going so off the rails that there is no particular expectation.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#226

Post by fortran77 »

dang wrote: post #171
fortran77 wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a reason traditional Jews read the five books of Moses in the original Hebrew (and why I was raised to be fluent in Hebrew, and also studied Aramaic, in addition to the Yiddish we used for daily conversation at home and the English I used outside in the United States).

Do you still have occasion to speak Yiddish?

Sure! When I'm hanging out with Hasidim.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#227

Post by vinceguidry »

blotter_paper wrote: post #225
vinceguidry wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was the point being made by both Orwell and parent commenter. The KJV is, for all it's archaisms, incredibly 'punchy' in a way that really can't be improved on. You could try, but you're only going to ever get a fraction of the way there, and in the end would only amount to a revision that nobody would accept. Try your hand at easier fare, like say Shakespeare.

I agree that this is what's being expressed, but I think I'd have an easier time revising KJV than Shakespeare. The pieces of translated bible that I have read didn't come anywhere near the complexities of Shakespeare. I don't think anyone would read/accept my revision, but I think it would be more beautiful in the eyes of most English professors. "I returned. Under the sun I saw that the race was not for the swift,…

There is a lot of crufty old stuff in Shakespeare, the stories are re-written pretty much yearly pretty much all omitting this stuff. I'm not a part of that world, but I'd be pretty surprised if theater companies that regularly run Shakespeare plays weren't revising the plays in that regard.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#228

Post by RaiseProfits »

goto11 wrote: post #185
RaiseProfits wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male on male sex was also a fact of life across many Christian communities, including/especially with monks, eunuchs, and other segregated communities, and people were certainly not frequently put to death for this. You can look up medieval crimes and punishments around the 12th century I think for a decent record of this. Note I am being super reductive, lmk if you want better sources.

I'm just pointing out the biblical prohibitions against male-on-male sex is not a recent invention as the GP comment suggested. Of course people did it anyway.

The bible prohibits many things that never really took root as social mores; I think the transition into society is super fascinating and arguably is an invention of sorts.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#229

Post by dbtx »

dbtx wrote: post #54
anon1m0us wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I grew up in a religious family and community and I asked the same question! There was a debate among people about which version to use and anything but the King James version was wrong. Why? Because of Revelation 22:18,19 18. For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: 19. A…

I believe that taking the warning to mean the entire modern collection called the Holy Bible, and not strictly the book of Revelation, is up to you. It does say 'book of prophecy' which clearly narrows it down, but it's all you. I believe that teaching this interpretation to others (that it means our entire Bible, which didn't yet exist in one book when that was written) also constitutes adding to or removing from th…

I was remembering Ed Decker explaining that Joseph Smith arbitrarily edited bits all over the Bible. He was explaining this as a problem in the context of that warning from Revelation, when a Mormon pointed out that it was strictly about the book of Revelation, so Ed simply rolled out a list of edits that were made to Revelation.

I didn't piece it together at the time (yesterday). I think I was responding to the supposed case where "someone" thinks it means that, or not, but parent didn't actually say that so it doesn't really matter. I think I strawmanned a thing for no real raisin and I think it's because I'm violating my own warning: someone else's stupidity is a profoundly stupid thing to concentrate on / obsess over. And IRL I'm surrounded. But that's never an excuse... that I consciously & voluntarily got myself into this situation is already a bad sign.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#230

Post by charwalker »

loco5niner wrote: post #220
shawabawa3 wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because this is an informal context and capital letters aren't all that meaningful in english It wouldn't be weird at all to say "the art of computer programming by donald knuth"

It would be incorrect, but it would not be weird because we have unfortunately gotten lazy in our writing.

It could also be dismissal of their importance like not capitalizing "god" when referring to the entity known as such. Capitalization may allow a reader expecting it to infer which god is being referred to by name vs the description like Zeus is a Greek god, God is the christian god. I'd prefer it if variables weren't reused though.
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