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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

#81
post #47
post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

so, uh, I thought the kjv was... not recognized as valid by the catholic church? Like, the KJV was authorized by the church of England, a, uh, rather different body from the Vatican. I thought a lot of what made the KJV important was that it was early in that split. I mean, i suppose that the Vatican would probably still have a pretty interesting opinion on it.

Another commenter elsewhere in this thread just mentioned the Preface to the KJV, which includes some specific criticism of the Catholic Church (referred to as "our chief adversaries") for (at the time) disapproving of vernacular language editions of the Bible. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C... .

Pretty sure the Muslims were always their chief adversaries.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#82
post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#83
post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The translators of the King James Bible themselves, specifically and without ambiguity stated in the introduction to the KJV that it's important for scholars to update the texts from time to time to allow current culture to understand what ancient writers meant. Wow, I don't think I had seen this before. I think you're probably referring to this section: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Bible_(King_James)/Preface#%C.…

Yeah the KJV was and is still a very good translation, and it was very controversial in it's day. The Catholic church didn't want the Bible in a "vulgar" or common tongue or even being able to read the Bible without their approval and guidance. The Latin Vulgate existed for the learned, and those who knew Latin objected also. I think that's why they felt the need to explain why they made the translation.

Just to add, the Douay Rhiems is a Catholic Bible released a few years before the KJV.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#85
post #73
post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

Not only is there to such consensus, but there is an important (important beyond religious issues) lack of consensus of what is the most accurate text to be translated. Modern societies weren't the first to find absurdities and contradictions in holy texts. Early scholars decided to search for the "actual" underlying meaning. For if the gods are infallible, and failures in the text must be human failures trying to tr…

>Which makes some sense; until at least Pope Urban, the Catholic Church was happy to perform both mixed sex and same sex marriages

That's not what your [3] says.

>Nevertheless, Historian John Boswell argued that Adelphopoiesis, or brother-making, represented an early form of religious same-sex marriage in the Orthodox church.

>Alan Bray saw the rite of Ordo ad fratres faciendum ("Order for the making of brothers") as serving the same purpose in the medieval Roman Catholic Church.

John Boswell died of AIDS. No mention of how Alan Bray died, but he was also homosexual. Hardly impartial sources.

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#86
post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...

The Douay-Rheims is a translation of the Latin vulgate, which is itself a translation of the earliest Greek/Hebrew texts into Latin. The vulgate itself is imperfect, and the Douay-Rheims is more like a translation of a translation, so I wouldn't call it the "most accurate"

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#87
post #6
post #3

Do religious groups in the US, specifically, Christians, talk about the history of the King James Bible? Why is it, uh, trusted by so many, when stuff like this hints at a storied construction?

That's a great point. There's some much arguing about what different passages in the bible mean, and what get's lost in those conversations that the passages in question are already a derivative source. The thinking must go something along the lines that everyone involved in each step must have been tasked by god himself with the wisdom to faithfully transcribe his wishes... or something of that sort.

Here’s a translation of the US constitution into Spanish: https://constitutioncenter.org/learn/educational-resources/h...

Can you argue about what the law is based on that translation? R is the exercise meaningless merely because you’re not reading it in the original English.

What if the English translation was lost to history. Is trying to engage in constitutional interpretation on the remaining Spanish text fruitless?

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#88
post #15

This may be off-topic but is there any consensus on what is the most accurate translation of the bible into English?

The Douay-Rheims translation is the most accurate. You can directly reconstruct the latin[1] from it. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douay–Rheims_Bible#Modern_Harv...

But Greek is the original language of the NT...

And there's definitely translations directly into English and other languages from Greek...

Re: Earliest known draft of the King James Bible discovered

#90
post #8

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.

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.

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