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Translating the Bible is a vexed task

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Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#111

Post by memling »

moloch-hai wrote: post #93

Faithfulness to an imagined "original text" is often asked for, often attempted, but wholly futile. We have no such "original text". There never was any such "original text". Read it in the form most entertaining, and you will experience it in the purest form still possible. Seek precision, and you will go badly astray. Anything that turns on the exact meaning of a word will be forever ambiguous. There can be no usef…

> Faithfulness to an imagined "original text" is often asked for, often attempted, but wholly futile.

I think this overstates the case, especially when it comes to the text of the Bible. Thousands of variants exist, but this is precisely because the text was so widely copied. The prevalence of manuscripts and pieces of them dwarfs every other ancient document by orders of magnitude. The abundance provides a means of reconstructing the text with a high degree of probability.

Whether that correlates with truth is of course another question but skepticism about the transmission of the Bible would lead us to much deeper skepticism about every ancient document. Perhaps that's warranted! But it seems like a losing proposition if you are to retrieve anything from written history.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#112

Post by elcritch »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #71
MonkeyClub wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, I know that, but it doesn’t offer anything else than a claim to authenticity, by posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded. The mentions of Biblical persons and events, as I hinted in the previous comment, are cultural rather than theological, and can’t be used to establish theological continuity, no matter how hard the Ismaelite genealogy is pressed.

> posing as a continuation, while the previous revelations are then discarded. Can't the same argument be raise for Christianity? I'm sure at the time of Jesus he saw himself as rectifying Jewish practice (and of course there are the passages where he says that the old laws are still in force), but pretty quickly Christianity was modified and sold to gentiles (thanks to Paul, who never met Jesus and wrote 13* of the…

Christianity does largely embrace the previous revelations still, even if they don’t follow most of the regulations. Listen to any AM radio station preacher and you’re bound to hear about the 10 commandments, the psalms, etc. They have various degrees of reinterpretation but the original content is still widely used and promoted. In contrast Islam seems to only tangentially refer to the Tanakh or the New Testament and reading them is not encouraged AFAICT. Islam did however borrow many practices from both.

I’d argue that in some ways Rabbinical Judaism is as divergent as Christianity from ancient Judaism in many ways. There’s no following of the temple sacrifices or rites, etc, so new traditions have been added. The central role of Israel as a physical country changed for many (much early Zionism was viewed dimly by religious Jews and primarily embraced by secular Jews). The Talmud is roughly in a similar position as the New Testament, etc. I say that as an academic exercise in parallels and not to demean the differences or history. I just find the thought exercise intriguing.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#113

Post by Mikeb85 »

cafard wrote: post #106
Mikeb85 wrote: post #44

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry. Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one. Y…

There are some strains in at least American Protestantism that do so, I suppose. On the other hand, Eerdmans, based in Michigan, publishes https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-o... .

When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on...

Protestants basically ignore that there's a TON of writings from the early church.

Even slightly later writings like John Climacus are still much, much closer to the time of Jesus and the early church than the reformation is, nevermind modern times.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#114

Post by lern_too_spel »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #40
cdogl wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islam incorporates Jesus, Moses and Abraham. The continuity is direct, both historically and theologically. The histories of Christianity and Islam are wrapped up in one another. After all, the Arab conquests took what europe called the “near east”, which had previously been Hellenized and Romanized. Whatever perceived gulf lies between Islam and Christendom politically, I don’t think the history bears it out.

> The continuity is direct, both historically and theologically. Theological continuity would mean that Islam accepts and extends, ie that Jesus is the anticipated Messiah subsequently crucified and risen, not to mention accepting Jesus as the son of God and final prophet. I have yet to find any Islamic faction that holds that to be true :)

Islam contains the concept of abrogation, which loosely means that the God of Abraham can change how he explains things. Just like the authors of the Bible, Mohammed makes multiple contradicting proclamations, and the latest one is what his God thinks is a better explanation now. Accordingly, any contradiction with the Bible is also simply their God updating his past explanations.

https://nyuscholars.nyu.edu/files/42476117/Abrogated_Rulings...

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#115

Post by dragonwriter »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #44

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry. Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one. Y…

> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture

They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#116

Post by Mikeb85 »

dragonwriter wrote: post #115
Mikeb85 wrote: post #44

Americans have a weird fixation on translating the Bible. No religion apart from Protestants attempt to interpret holy texts without supporting ancient commentsry. Jews have the Talmud and other commentaries, Muslims have hadiths, Orthodox and Catholic Christians have centuries of commentaries by saints, similarly Buddhism, Hinduism, Taoism and others all have many supporting texts, not just a single canonical one. Y…

> It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture They... don't: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_Bible

And who decided what the "New Testament" is? Hint, not the Protestants...

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#117

Post by jkepler »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #113
cafard wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some strains in at least American Protestantism that do so, I suppose. On the other hand, Eerdmans, based in Michigan, publishes https://www.eerdmans.com/Products/7978/eerdmans-commentary-o... .

When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on... Protestants…

Do you have evidence of this claim?

One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus had already done the heavy theological lifting, and the current need was to learn from him (and other church fathers) and recontextualize their insights for the church today.

For many protestants I've known, the church fathers and the ecumenical councils are seen as helpful, but never carrying the same authority as the Scriptures. The authority of councils and creeds is derived from the Bible, not the inverse.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#118

Post by Mikeb85 »

jkepler wrote: post #117
Mikeb85 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I say commentary I mean ancient commentary, or you could call it supplemental texts, ancient homilies, whatever. I mean writings closer to the actual time of Jesus. People like Ambrose, Jerome, Augustine of Hippo, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil of Caesarea, John Chrysostom, Irenaeus of Lyon, Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, even Origin or Tertullian, and so on... Protestants…

Do you have evidence of this claim? One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus…

> Do you have evidence of this claim?

I mean, there's like 1000 Protestant sects and they're all seperate so good luck, but the vast majority don't recognize writings of saints...

Here's a nice article explaining what the early church fathers got wrong from an evangelical perspective: https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathe...

Just go to any Evangelical or American Protestant heavy website and see how they treat writings that aren't scripture...

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#119

Post by wizofaus »

dendodge wrote: post #33
wizofaus wrote: post #29

I'm more curious about the first word in that article - is "dodgy" becoming accepted as part of the US English vernacular now? It's particularly common in Aus English but I usually have to find alternatives when conversing with Usonians.

The Economist is a UK publication

Wow - I'd always assumed it was US-based for some reason (maybe because its articles get referred to on HN so frequently!).

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#120

Post by cafard »

Mikeb85 wrote: post #118
jkepler wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have evidence of this claim? One Protestant ministry I find helpful equips protestants to understand the Christian gospel and contemporary paganism by drawing on the rich heritage of Irenaeus's apologetic defense against the pagans of his day. That particular ministries entire idea was seeing the connection between global paganism and gnostic belief in the first centuries of the church, realizing that Irenaeus…

> Do you have evidence of this claim? I mean, there's like 1000 Protestant sects and they're all seperate so good luck, but the vast majority don't recognize writings of saints... Here's a nice article explaining what the early church fathers got wrong from an evangelical perspective: https://bible.org/article/theology-adrift-early-church-fathe... Just go to any Evangelical or American Protestant heavy website and se…

In a couple of places, Jaroslav Pelikan quotes Benjamin Breckenridge Warfield's Augustine and Calvin (a book and an author I've never heard of elsewhere) as saying "the Reformation, inwardly considered, was just the ultimate triumph of Augustine's doctrine of grace over Augustine's doctrine of the church." A selection of Luther's writings shows numerous entries for Augustine in the index--not all for support, it is true.

A dip into Calvin's Institutes of Religion turns up references to Ambrose, Augustine, Jerome, Gregory Nazianzus, Basil, Chrysostom, and Bernard of Clairvaux.

[edit: the sentence on Calvin]

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