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Translating the Bible is a vexed task

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Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#181
post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that seems pretty antithetical to the concept of 'all powerful'. It doesn't seem like god is too concerned with free will anyway, at least according to the bible. If you read the story of pharoah and moses, it is clear that god tramps all over pharoah's free will. The story goes that after every plague, "and god hardened pharoah's heart"... which means pharaoh didn't have the free will to let the Israelites go, inste…

> The story goes that after every plague, "and god hardened pharoah's heart"... which means pharaoh didn't have the free will to let the Israelites go I am familiar with an explanation for this: the "hardening" was just a reinforcement of what was already there. God didn't make the pharaoh's heart this way from the start. He was already disinclined to let the Israel go, as per his ability to choose freely. Hardening…

Sounds like translating clear, obvious text to what people want the answer to be. Now explain Babel.

"And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven....

And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of men builded.

And the LORD said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language; and this they begin to do: and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have imagined to do.

Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one another's speech.

So the LORD scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth: and they left off to build the city.

Therefore is the name of it called Babel; because the LORD did there confound the language of all the earth: and from thence did the LORD scatter them abroad upon the face of all the earth. Genesis 11:1-9 "

The crime? The people were one, and were making progress.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That does look amazing, thank you for the link. Unfortunately for me it doesn't contain the deuterocanonical books ("apocrypha") which for me are important to have.

Crossway does publish the ESV with apocrypha. I think there must be a Reader's Edition with them somewhere.

Unfortunately the ESV Reader's Edition does not contain the deuterocanonical books, it's actually noted on the Bibliotheca (Bible) Wikipedia article that Crossway's edition "could be viewed as less ecumenical" because it's missing these books. Still, the ESV set is stunning and I still am considering picking up, I'd just use another Bible for the missing books.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#183

Most Bible translations remove the tetragrammaton, anyone familiar with whether or not it appears in copies of the Torah? Many Christian denominations simply don’t acknowledge its existence.

The Christian practice of commonly rendering the Tetragammatron as “LORD” in small caps comes from historic Jewish practice, known from extant copies of the Septuagint (a Jewish translation). The Tetragammatron is important to Christianity. John 8:58 is generally read as Jesus invoking it in an explicit claim of self‐divinity.

John exists outside of the Hebrew Scriptures though. I would go as far as to disagree with the statement “The Tetragrammaton is important to Christianity.”

Translations of the Tetragrammaton exists in some translations of the Bible and removed in most others (in place of LORD), for example Pslams 83:18. Hebrew Scriptures keep the title intact, Christian translations remove it.

Why is that?

P.S. the Tetragrammaton does not translate literally to Jesus

P.P.S Scrolling through this list of translations doesn’t seem to render the Tetragrammaton for your given verse (https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=John%208&versio...)

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