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Translating the Bible is a vexed task

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Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#71

Post by tasty_freeze »

MonkeyClub wrote: post #15
arp242 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Islam is generally considered an Abrahamic religion. There is a lot of continuity; the (very very) short version of the Islam perspective is "Abraham explained God's will to us, then Jesus was sent by God to explain God's will better, and then finally God sent Mohammed and he communicated God's will perfectly". Three time's the charm I guess? Many of the figures you know from the Bible make their appearance in the Qu…

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 27 books of the New Testament) and the Mosaic laws were mostly set aside.

The whole idea of "fulfillment theology" is that Jesus fulfilled the old covenant and established a new law. That is why Christians eat pork and so on.

* everyone agrees that three of those 13 weren't actually written by Paul, and three more are in various degrees of doubt

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#72

Post by vehemenz »

The article only touches on this in the last paragraph, but another challenge is translating the language to serve multiple purposes. The canonical texts never serve one purpose. They need to have an allegorical/exegetic component for the educated and clergy, and they need to have a down-to-earth moral/historical component for the "unwashed masses."

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#74

Post by crazygringo »

fjfaase wrote: post #10

Rather superficial article about the subject. Whole books are written about the subject or why one translation is better than another. (A quick search will find you people telling you not to use the King James translation.) The article does not even touch upon culture things, such like how to deal with a translation for a culture where pigs are kept as pets or cattle, while in the old testament they are considered as…

> Rather superficial article about the subject. Whole books are written about the subject

Well yes, it's an introductory article prompted by the "whole book" it specifically points readers to — The Word, by John Barton [1].

The whole point of the article is that if this intro whets your appetite, go read that book.

Not sure what else you're expecting from a short, 750-word weekly magazine column about language.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Word-How-Translate-Bible_and-Matters/...

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#75

Post by CitrusFruits »

bentley wrote: post #61
Luker88 wrote: post #57

Where do I find a literal translation of the bible? I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known. I think have read enough fiction with made up words to be able to understand something anyway. Also, maybe not based on Latin? Latin was not the original language anyway, and I got fed up with the mistranslations that we keep repeating as correct. I gave up after searching and learning the h…

Off the cuff, I would say ESV is probably the most mainstream translation that fits your requirements. The translation style attempts to be literal and the source texts are based on the original Greek and Hebrew, not Latin translations. How literal you want to get beyond that is kind of a deep rabbit hole, that probably ends with learning ancient Hebrew and Greek. > I would like one that does not force a meaning on w…

Yeah I've heard the ESV jokingly described as "English as you've never heard it before" because of the lengths it goes to in order to preserve ordering and meaning to the words while still technically being grammatically correct English.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#76

Post by messe »

shakna wrote: post #18
antihipocrat wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Koran literally begins by explaining how it is related to the other two religions that preceded it, and how it is also historically contiguous with them.

So does "The Divine Authority of Holy Scripture Asserted" by self-professed Messiah, John Miller. There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that relationship is anything more than tenuous. This isn't a statement on Islam - depending how you examine certain things and weigh them, it could be either Abrahamic or maybe a little bit more distant. But you need to…

> There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion

Where do you draw the line?

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#77

Post by shakna »

messe wrote: post #76
shakna wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So does "The Divine Authority of Holy Scripture Asserted" by self-professed Messiah, John Miller. There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion, but that doesn't necessarily mean that relationship is anything more than tenuous. This isn't a statement on Islam - depending how you examine certain things and weigh them, it could be either Abrahamic or maybe a little bit more distant. But you need to…

> There are plenty of cults that spring out of every major religion Where do you draw the line?

Generally speaking, size and widespread acceptance. The use of the word "cult" there, isn't an insult. It just speaks to the smaller breakoff groups that form. Protestantism began as a cult. It is no longer.

Sort of like how creeks spring from every river.

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#78

Post by whiteandnerdy »

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 :)

I think you're setting an unreasonably high bar.

Christianity has a high degree of continuity with Judaism, but rejects important aspects of Jewish theology, such as Kosher and Sabbath-keeping. So while Christianity accepts large amounts of Jewish theology, and extends new ideas, it doesn't universally accept everything that came before it.

Similarly, Islam accepts large amounts of Christian theology (and indeed reintroduces some Jewish practice) and brings new beliefs with it, but doesn't bring every tenet along.

Admittedly Jesus' divinity is a very big part of Christianity to reject; but then, the idea of the trinity would be an equally big pill to swallow for a Jew ("hear, O Israel: the LORD your God is one").

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#79

Post by gshubert17 »

bentley wrote: post #16

Since the article is kind of shallow, here are a few atypical approaches to Biblical translation I’ve found interesting over the years: • The Five Books of Moses, by Everett Fox, who attempts to retain in English the underlying poetry of the Hebrew like alliteration, meter, wordplay, and so on. ( https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/55160/the-five-book... ) • The Books of the Bible: not a new translation (it’s ju…

Similar translations from the Greek by Andy Gaus titled "The Unvarnished Gospels" and "The Unvarnished New Testament".

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

Re: Translating the Bible is a vexed task

#80

Post by memling »

Luker88 wrote: post #57

Where do I find a literal translation of the bible? I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known. I think have read enough fiction with made up words to be able to understand something anyway. Also, maybe not based on Latin? Latin was not the original language anyway, and I got fed up with the mistranslations that we keep repeating as correct. I gave up after searching and learning the h…

Of the unencumbered versions, Young's Literal is popular, although stilted. He used the Textus Receptus and Masoretic Text. Its age means it hasn't kept up with modern discoveries, however. If you have some facility with the original languages, you can find critical editions that highlight significant variants.

Translation is a hard problem, even in modern language. Rendering a figure of speech literally often means finding a comparable phrase in the target language, for example. Word-for-word is not the same as literal!

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