Translating the Bible is a vexed task

https://www.economist.com/culture/2023/01/19/translating-the-bible-is-a-vexed-task-as-a-new-book-shows

by MoSattler • 4 years ago

53 176 4 years ago

economist.com

MoSattler2• 4 years ago

https://archive.ph/iJJ1Z

MonkeyClub6• 4 years ago

“Traduttore, traditore” (“translator, you traitor!”).

Translating ancient texts is hard enough given the complex historical and cultural contexts. When it comes to religious texts, though, the level of complexity grows exponentially, especially given how their contexts widen.

On an unrelated note, this always vexes me:

By contrast, the two faiths’ cousin—Christianity

I get how one can see a relation between Judaism and Christianity.

But to add Islam to the mix under the generic label of “Abrahamic religions” seems to be way too much of a stretch, as there’s neither historical nor philosophical continuity.

It’s like saying that everyone who’s heard of the Trojan horse story and perhaps related it to their circle is automatically a member of a “Homeric culture”.

rippercushions2• 4 years ago

It's not a stretch at all. In the same way that the New Testament (Christianity) extends the Old Testament (Judaism), the Koran considers itself a part of the same lineage. Moses, Jesus etc are prophets in Islam, and Jews and Christians are "people of the book" and accorded special protections.

akiselev• 4 years ago

Abraham is considered the first prophet in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam hence Abrahamic.

arp242• 4 years ago

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 Quran as well, including Abraham of course (hence: Abrahamic religion).

MonkeyClub6• 4 years ago

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.

bandie914• 3 years ago

then Joseph Smith's religion is also Abrahamic.

antihipocrat• 4 years ago

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.

shakna6• 4 years ago

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 make a judgement call.

xwolfi• 4 years ago

There is: Mohammed met many christian travelers and decided it was a good idea to unify people.

The stories are the same, the people are closer than Italians and Israelis, and saying Christianity is Abrahamic because Rome killed a guy who reneged most of jewish literal intepretation then elevated him as a divine figure is just as silly...

verbify3• 4 years ago

I think Judaism and Islam have more in common with each other than with Christianity.

Christianity's belief in the divinity of Jesus is shared by neither other religion. The Jewish jurist Maimonides ruled that Christians were idol worshipers because of their belief in the trinity and Muslims were not (Menachem Meiri rules otherwise).

But more than that, in terms of practice, Muslims and Jews share a great deal. Praying in a certain direction. Praying several times a day. Specific dietary requirements, including banning pork.

And Jewish and Islamic thinkers were in constant dialogue, I'm not sure why anyone could say there's no philosophical continuity.

User233• 4 years ago

Muslims and Jews share a great deal. Praying in a certain direction. Praying several times a day. Specific dietary requirements, including banning pork.

Christian churches face the East. Christian clerics and devout laypersons pray the Liturgy of the Hours daily. Finally many Christians observe religious dietary requirements involving fasting and abstinence from meat.

cdogl• 4 years ago

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.

MonkeyClub6• 4 years ago

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 :)

lolinder3• 4 years ago

No one calls Islam a "Judaic" religion or a "Christian" religion, they call it an "Abrahamic" religion. That implies nothing more than a shared relationship to Abraham. How far they diverge theologically from that point is irrelevant to the question of whether they can all be considered Abrahamic.

Also, as far as the differences go, this comment shows a stark lack of understanding of world religions in general. For all the differences between Islam, Judaism and Christianity, their similarities are glaringly obvious when placed alongside Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto, or any of the other religions of the world. "Abrahamic religions" is a very useful grouping for religious studies, serving much the same role as the "Romance languages" in linguistics.

When you look at the full scope of what is possible in religion, the Abrahamic religions have more in common than they do differences.

User233• 4 years ago

I get how one can see a relation between Judaism and Christianity.

That relation exists but it’s vastly overstated by many people today. Christianity and Talmudic Judaism are both in some sense successors to the old Hebrew religion that the Romans ended by destroying the Temple, but they draw very little from each other. In fact the direct predecessors of today’s rabbis, the Pharisees, are already portrayed in a less than flattering light in the New Testament.

Islam on the other hand positions itself as the successor faith to both Judaism and Christianity. And frankly, nowadays, I’d say that’s the closest relation those two faiths have.

Waterluvian4• 4 years ago

Regarding “hard choices” when translating: what about not making them?

If the goal isn’t to editorialize on purpose, could one just write, “[young girl|virgin]” when faced with what the “correct” translation is supposed to be?

rippercushions2• 4 years ago

There are some 1500 hapax legomena in the Old Testament, means words that appear only once and, by extension, whose exact meaning is often unknown. How do you translate them?

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

Waterluvian4• 4 years ago

Ah makes sense. That is indeed vexing.

If we have complete gaps in our knowledge of the language, then there’s no room for anything but editorialization.

XorNot• 4 years ago

Should they be translated then? Leaving then unchanged would communicate the fact that the word has no direct translation. English has borrowed and invented lots of words which have no direct meaning, they just are a subtle way to express a concept - e.g. "grok"

joosters• 4 years ago

A famous example of which is 'daily' in 'give us this day our daily bread' (technically a 'dis legomenon' since it occurs twice, but since it is in identical passages, the repetition doesn't help) - it's something that's still said so frequently and yet we have no good way of knowing what the original word actually meant - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epiousios

pjc50• 4 years ago

It rapidly becomes unreadable?

joelhaasnoot• 4 years ago

Also how do you translate concepts that were clearly known to the readers to modern times. Do you entrust that readers have someone to tell them what this would've meant, or do you adapt to something more apt in their language. For example in countries where they don't each bread made from wheat or that isn't a staple, daily food, what do you translate for bread?

Waterluvian4• 4 years ago

In high school our Shakespeare books had the text on the left and explanations on the right. The explanations were mostly to deal with what you’re bringing up.

mcswell4• 4 years ago

That's > or < what the Amplified Bible does.

fjfaase2• 4 years ago

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 unclean animals. It also does not mention that there is not one Greek text upon which the new testament is based, but that there are many variants: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Textual_variants_in_the_New_Te...

MoSattler2• 4 years ago

Rather superficial article about the subject.

I liked the article because it gave a general idea on how hard it is to translate very old religious texts. I don't think it's trying to write a theological analysis, just giving a basic understanding of the subject.

For those who are more interested in the topic, they can do more research themselves, like checking out the book the economist is covering in the article.

Amezarak2• 4 years ago

(A quick search will find you people telling you not to use the King James translation.)

Most of them are bad reasons - for example, one very popular criticism is the claim that KJV invented the usage of the word "unicorn" in the Bible, and it's actually a wild ox. But it was traditionally translated that way from the time of the Latin Vulgate, and nobody knows for sure what a re'em is. [Ed - it turns out the Septuagint also uses the word μονοκερως, so it goes back even further.) So while it seems reasonable to personally disagree with the choice of word, it's going too far to declare it to be wrong when a) nobody knows what the referent is for sure b) the two pre-existing "canonical" translations have used your equivalent translation for ~1800 years.

You can find people explaining why not to use any translation; people are, uh, religious about their chosen translation and the KJV is the old guy you've got to tear down. But any mainstream translation is probably OK. You certainly miss out on a lot of poetry and historical citations if you skip out on the KJV, and there's very few actual problems with it. Probably the fairest criticism is the general decline in reading ability means that many people find the KJV hard to read, and the NKJV in that regard is only a minor improvement for modern audiences.

fjfaase2• 4 years ago

I was just mentioning the KJV as an example because it was mentioned in the article, but I guess that the same can be found about every English translation. I have a NASB translation at home that I used a long time when I still believed in the existence of the super-natural. I read through the Dutch NBG (from 1951) translation (Dutch being my mother tongue) and parts of the Staten Vertaling (the Dutch equivalent of the KJV), which by the way also had a substantial impact on the Dutch language, giving it some new words, but also influenced it grammar. Some of those influences have waned in the past decades. I am familiar with several other translations in Dutch. I understand that after the NBG translation the Dutch society for bible translations has produced two more translations.

User233• 4 years ago

There’s even a KJV for Catholics now thanks to some Anglicans choosing to become Catholic.

StopTheWorld• 4 years ago

You certainly miss out on a lot of poetry and historical citations if you skip out on the KJV, and there's very few actual problems with it.

Looking at the KJV's book of Revelation, it contains all the errors that Erasmus's Greek manuscript for the book of Revelation has. It's a terrible, and often invented, translation of that book. It's not just a few problems with a word here or there, it's part translation, and part some book which was invented some time in the 16th-17th century. (Meaning that some of the KJV book of Revelation was invented at that time - the actual book was probably written in the 1st century).

ajanuary• 3 years ago

I found Dan McCellans video [1] to be informative. Two of the biggest problems I took away from that video are:

1) KJV is based on later revisions of the text. Newer works are based on newer discoveries of older versions of the text, and so are closer to the original source text.

2) The differences with modern English usage can lead to very different readings from what the authors of KJV meant. A good example is given at about 19 minutes into the video.

[1] https://youtu.be/RRn-De2I6II

crazygringo• 4 years ago

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/...

bentley8• 4 years ago

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 just the NIV), but rather than a typical modern Bible which is laid out for easy referencing, instead cuts out chapters and verses completely, formatting it instead in the way the books were originally written, and eliminating a few historical artifacts of translation like the splitting of the Book of Chronicles, the order of books relative to each other, and so on. (https://www.christianbook.com/niv-books-of-the-bible-volumes...)

• Alpha: A Translation of Genesis 1. (https://llamasandmystegosaurus.blogspot.com/2017/05/alpha.ht...)

err4nt• 4 years ago

If you like Everett Fox, you may like Robert Alter's translations of the tanakh. He has translated the entire hebrew bible and given plenty of notes along the way. If you don't read hebrew, by the time you are done reading the translation and notes you will have seen or heard the hebrew language wordplay, and the english translation by itself is nice to read!

gshubert17• 4 years ago

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

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

ChocMontePy• 4 years ago

There was a beautifully made book from 1936 called "The Bible Designed To Be Read As Literature" that was set out and edited to be more like a normal book:

https://archive.org/details/dli.ministry.10239/

I picked up a copy secondhand years ago and I'm happy I did.

TheFreim8• 3 years ago

Bibliotheca looks like possibly a modern version of this, I recently ordered a copy so I'll know when it ships late 2023.

https://www.bibliotheca.co/

TheFreim8• 3 years ago

instead cuts out chapters and verses completely, formatting it instead in the way the books were originally written

I wish there were more translations like this (and of a high quality binding). One example I found and have ordered is "Bibliotheca" which looks amazing, should arrive later this year. Unfortunately it's not a translation I'm very interested in, I've been seriously considering seeing what it takes to print my own edition that has all the textual features I want.

mitchbob• 3 years ago

For readers of the Hebrew Bible who want to dig deeper, the Jewish Publication Society Commentary series [1] is quite remarkable. Here's the description in the listing for the first volume, for Genesis. [2]

"The JPS Torah Commentary series guides readers through the words and ideas of the Torah. Each volume is the work of a scholar who stands at the pinnacle of his field.

Every page contains the complete traditional Hebrew text, with cantillation notes, the JPS translation of the Holy Scriptures, aliyot breaks, Masoretic notes, and commentary by a distinguished Hebrew Bible scholar, integrating classical and modern sources.

Each volume also contains supplementary essays that elaborate upon key words and themes, a glossary of commentators and sources, extensive bibliographic notes, and maps."

[1] https://jps.org/product-category/collections/jps-bible-comme...

[2] https://jps.org/books/jps-torah-commentary-genesis/

peignoir• 4 years ago

Seems like a field where GPT could do a descent job

sgt• 4 years ago

Descent job or decent job?

haunter2• 4 years ago

Nice typo

samus2• 4 years ago

People have translated the Bible for hundreds of years now. They have interpreted, expounded and preached it for a way longer time already. The problems are interpretation details and questions that cannot be definitely answered because the texts were composed millenia ago. This is a field where GPT is truly redundant.

Also, since it was trained on modern-day texts, it is very ill-suited for this task. And there might not be enough ancient texts to properly train a large model that could be used to extract hidden knowledge.

wizofaus3• 4 years ago

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.

dendodge• 4 years ago

The Economist is a UK publication

wizofaus3• 4 years ago

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

Mikeb857• 4 years ago

TIL dodgy isn't used much by Americans. Canadian here, we use it all the time.

xeromal2• 4 years ago

Now that I think about it, dodgy isn't used everywhere but it wouldn't feel out of place if someone used it here in the US unlike other commonwealth words like bonnet or solicitor.

tasty_freeze2• 4 years ago

I'm an american. It isn't common, but it is common enough that when it is used it doesn't stick out as an out of place word. I use it myself once in a while.

haunter2• 4 years ago

Personally I always thought that formal equivalence (word-for-word) is better than dynamic equivalence (thought-for-thought). And that’t not just the Bible but generally speaking about any ancient text. On the other hand that doesn’t mean that the translation should be archaic too (see the “ye and thou vs you”)

But oh well it’s a nice topic. Our languages constantly evolve as time goes on yet the originals stay the same. Who knows maybe AI will be helpful too here one day.

Mikeb857• 4 years ago

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.

Yet Protestant Americans are looking for a "perfect" translation so that they can magically understand a text that was never meant to be a single text nevermind interpreted on its own. It's also strange that Protestants trust the Orthodox/Catholic church to decide what is scripture but throw away commentary by saints, including those who lived through the councils that decided what is considered scripture.

shakna6• 4 years ago

Protestants are absolutely trained to make use of commentaries. Its one of the bare fundamentals of exegesis, which is taught in first year in basically every Bible college. Its nonsensical to say that they ignore the masses of study on these documents.

Mikeb857• 4 years ago

Protestant commentaries are way too modern and they throw out basically anything they deem "too Catholic".

They also threw out books of the Bible that everyone used for the better part of 1500 years.

bandie914• 3 years ago

yes they trained to use, however i never heared a preacher appealed to a commentary source, only to the bible itself. strange. they usually answer any question with 1 bible verse, no more.

cafard3• 4 years ago

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... .

Mikeb857• 4 years ago

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.

dragonwriter3• 4 years ago

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

Mikeb857• 4 years ago

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

Luker88• 4 years ago

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 history of the text, but maybe something exists, even if it is not recognized by this or that church?

bentley8• 4 years ago

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 words that are not known.

A study edition or commentary would help with that.

blendergeek• 4 years ago

I would like one that does not force a meaning on words that are not known.

The Amplified Bible offers several alternative meanings for a lot of words to try to get some more nuance across. This does make for harder reading.

CitrusFruits• 4 years ago

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.

yjftsjthsd-h• 4 years ago

I've become fond of https://ebible.org/t4t/

memling5• 4 years ago

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!

rom16384• 4 years ago

Try the YLT, Young's Literal Translation, https://biblehub.com/ylt/genesis/1.htm

xeromal2• 4 years ago

Check out the ESV

mcswell4• 4 years ago

Almost no translations are based on the Latin. Possibly some Catholic ones are, I don't know.

Some translators might have looked at the Latin, particularly in hopes of clarifying some of the Hebrew, since we have almost no non-Biblical texts in ancient Hebrew. I guess the assumption there--if anyone did do this--would be that Jerome (the main translator into Latin) was closer to the time that ancient Hebrew was spoken, and might therefore have had access to a better understanding of its meaning. But this idea is mostly speculation on my part.

sombragris3• 3 years ago

The most literal English translation that is yet still readable English is the New American Standard Bible. ESV is very good, too, but at some times is more "literary" than literal.

If you want more literal, you might try the American Standard Version, which never gained much traction but it's a good formal, if older, translation.

getoffmyyawn• 4 years ago

A big challenge in translating "The Bible" is that it is an anthology collected over 100s or 1000s of years in many different and divergent forms. Thus there is no authoritative original version. All available versions were compiled, curated, and edited by their respective authors.

nhtsamera2• 4 years ago

Another big challenge is the punishment for getting it wrong, which the article doesn't even mention.

For I testify unto every man that heareth the words of the prophecy of this book, If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him the plagues that are written in this book: And if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book.

Personally, I wish more people would include curse clauses in important documents. Legal contracts, government constitutions...why not tack on a few lines threatening a dire curse for any party who reneges on their responsibilities?

38362936482• 4 years ago

Please say that that is from the old testament

mbfg5• 3 years ago

The thing is the curse is only for the loser. The winner can change the document at will. For instance,for hundreds of years, christians lived and died thinking that the book of revelations was not part of the canon, only added 397 ad. The winner gets to say, it was always apart of the canon, you just didn't know it. Similarly, books like Shepherd of Hermas, was considered by many to be part of the canon, but later removed. No curses for either.

vehemenz• 4 years ago

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."

fortran772• 4 years ago

That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud, in its original language, three times a week and cycle over the whole thing in the course of a year.

TheFreim8• 3 years ago

That’s why we read the Hebrew bible out loud

Do you have any resources for someone who wants to learn Biblical Hebrew? I desire to be able to read the original languages.

fortran772• 3 years ago

Study at a yeshiva? Parents send their kids to schools that teach this stuff. That's' how I learned it. And it takes years to deal with modern vs biblical Hebrew, and also Aramaic, etc.

Start with Sefaria so at least you can see what it looks like: https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.1?lang=bi&aliyot=0

moloch-hai4• 4 years ago

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 useful list of such passages or words. You must assume all are.

Disagreement about meaning is unavoidable and mistaken. Your opinion about true meaning fails in exact proportion with your confidence in it. Extracting "true meaning" is no different from Newton's attempts at divination by versal numerology.

You may evaluate others' opinions in this way. The more confidence they have in their interpretation, the less competent is their opinion.

athorax• 4 years ago

"You may evaluate others' opinions in this way. The more confidence they have, the less competent is their opinion."

Rare self burn, nice.

moloch-hai4• 4 years ago

Rare? Thanks.

memling5• 4 years ago

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.

moloch-hai4• 4 years ago

I am fully on board with considering the value of the text regardless of its provenance, and with measured skepticism about all received documents, ancient or modern. Best evidence is that actual physical existence of a Jesus in Palestine is about 50% likely, but the likelihood that (such a) He said any of what is received is roughly nil.

WUMBOWUMBO2• 4 years ago

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.

abrudz• 4 years ago

It absolutely does. A Torah scroll without it would be invalid for public readings.

bentley8• 3 years ago

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.

WUMBOWUMBO2• 3 years ago

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...)

mbfg5• 4 years ago

Odd that an all powerful god would choose text written in dying languages, easily susceptible to being lost or destroyed, as the preferred method of communication.

expralitemonk78• 4 years ago

Thomas Paine, US founding father and deist, believed God's Word is the universe he created. From "The Age of Reason":

It is only in the CREATION that all our ideas and conceptions of a word of God can unite. The Creation speaketh a universal language, independently of human speech or human language, multiplied and various as they be. It is an ever existing original, which every man can read. It cannot be forged; it cannot be counterfeited; it cannot be lost; it cannot be altered; it cannot be suppressed. It does not depend upon the will of man whether it shall be published or not; it publishes itself from one end of the earth to the other. It preaches to all nations and to all worlds; and this word of God reveals to man all that is necessary for man to know of God.

Do we want to contemplate his power? We see it in the immensity of the creation. Do we want to contemplate his wisdom? We see it in the unchangeable order by which the incomprehensible Whole is governed. Do we want to contemplate his munificence? We see it in the abundance with which he fills the earth. Do we want to contemplate his mercy? We see it in his not withholding that abundance even from the unthankful. In fine, do we want to know what God is? Search not the book called the scripture, which any human hand might make, but the scripture called the Creation.

mbfg5• 4 years ago

i wonder WHY he believed that, what evidence he had to think it was true?

mcswell4• 4 years ago

He was doing the best he could, given Babel. The whole thing, going all the way back to the Fall, was necessarily and inescapably imperfect.

Why would an omnipotent and omniscient God create such a mess, you ask? A lot of theological ink has been spilled on that question, but I think the consensus was that it was the best that could be done, given a (theological) concept of free will. The alternative was for God to create nothing at all, or at least nothing sentient.

mbfg5• 3 years ago

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, instead destined to suffer more carnage from the next plague. Even Babel shows that. God stopped the progress of a peaceful people who were learning, developing and progressing technologically, socially etc. It is probably one of the few examples from the bible where people were actually getting along. God put a stop to that.

bandie914• 3 years ago

exactly. because it is not the writing which is the primary means of communication. they only suppose it since the invention of sola scriptura. churches with apostolic origin always claimed it's the personal communion and handing-on the faith among the faithful with the assured support from the Holy Spirit is the way.

kgwxd• 4 years ago

People can’t even reliably retell a story they witnessed firsthand and experienced in their native language 5 minutes ago. I don’t understand how anyone can put any stock into religious and other historical text, it’s all complete bs.

cafard3• 4 years ago

With a bit of work, one can find Ronald Knox's short volume On Englishing the Bible, which has many interesting things to say.

mcswell4• 3 years ago

Some things this article doesn't touch on (although maybe the complete book does), which come up when translating into other languages. I'm not saying there are no solutions to these, but they are interesting (and for those who believe, important) questions.

1) How to translate names of animals and other concepts that are unfamiliar in the target culture, e.g. "sheep" into Inuit.

2) Whether to translate a given word in the same way in each instance of the word. Suppose you're translating into a Mayan language, where "bread" is an unfamiliar concept. Jesus refers to "breaking bread" (literal sense) and "the bread of life" (metaphorical sense, for which a translation as tortilla might be better).

3) How to translate a word where the target language makes unavoidable distinctions that the source language does not. In Tzeltal, there is a word for "older brother" and a word for "younger sibling", but no word for "brother, whether younger or older". When the Bible refers to Peter and his brother Andrew, which word do you use?

Lots more...

TheFreim8• 3 years ago

The issue of having not enough words in the target language is definitely a big one. In John 6:50-54 the original Greek uses different words for eating that have different connotations but will sometimes be rendered as the same word in English "eat" which takes away from the text. Relevant to Christian understanding of the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist.

StuffMaster• 3 years ago

https://www.reddit.com/r/AcademicBiblical/ . I doubt I'll ever shop elsewhere for biblical info.

Translating the Bible is a vexed task

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