171–180 of 245 posts
This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?
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).
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…
Could someone please explain to a non-English speaker why is it considered correct (in non-religious context, as many of the commenters here do) to write "the bible" instead of "the Bible" and "new testament" instead of "New Testament"? Aren't they proper names of the books? We don't say "the art of computer programming" instead of "The Art of Computer Programming" when we reference Donald Knuth's book, do we? Looks…
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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.
But yeah, the old translation is becoming nearly incomprehensible now; compare the King James version of the ten commandments with the new translations: https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&versi... vs https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Exodus+20&versi...
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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 abo…
>"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." What if it's true though? The problem you have is that the converse would be objectionable to Christians as you'd be saying God's new covenant achieved nothing.
I'm just saying this was something I stepped in by accident and that you should be aware of it.
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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.
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 religion around it and its preservation. Something that can survive an intellectual step backwards. (Not unheard of; see the Greek and Roman societies of old. Their knowledge was lost for a long time, but Christianity survived. Of course their knowledge getting lost may be related to the rise of Christian religions as well)
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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.
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Any translation has a profound impact on the way the bible is perceived, so perhaps it is worthwhile to look directly at the source. Take this famous opener in the KJV bible for example: John 1:1 "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." Well just what does it mean by Word? Turns out this is Koine Greek λόγος, logos. Logos not only means word, but it importantly also means reas…
"reasoning, order, and logic" still make sense to me because I believe in theistic evolution - evolution is basically a tool that God used to get us where we are today. There is also Pandeism (where basically God ceased to exist because he became the universe). Scott Adam's book God Debris touches on this. FYI, (I'm not Catholic, but) the Catholic Church today holds that view that Science explains the how, and Religi…
That would be probably the biggest improvement for mankind since inventions of fire and wheel, but we're unfortunately often far from there. As an atheist/agnostic, the amount of crap I had to (and sometimes still have to) go through is significant.
Almost all religious people interact with me in fashion of 'oh-you-lost-foolish-boy-who-doesn't-get-the-one-and-only-truth-which-is-mine/ours, but-we-shall-be-kind-to-you-nevertheless' to some degree. That's not how respect looks like.
Probably the most respectful behavior was actually from various muslims while travelling, although for them it was sometimes hard to grasp that I can be fully working human being without faith in god (at least in usual sense). Its such an integral part of their existence, more than most Christians these days I believe. Most christians are way too self-righteous, and you can't even talk with them about it because they become immediately deeply offended.
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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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harrowing_of_Hell
Catholic church takes care explain that officially (1):
http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p122...
Some people find that inconvenient.
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.
For me the atheist/rationalist view and the mythical/spiritual view are two poles of my psychological constitution. They are opposed, yet indivisible like the poles of a magnet. I feel as though I wouldn't be my whole self without either. The Bible, the Greek myths, Norse mythology and the King Arthur stories and all foundational cultural touchstones for me. Their influence is everywhere, and I don't need to be a believing Christian to appreciate the influence of the Bible, any more than I need to believe in Zeus and Odin to appreciate the cultural contribution of their mythologies.