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Old 01-07-2004, 03:24 AM   #1
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Default Bible Translation Errors

If there have been so many translation errors, how do christians even know they are worshiping correctly?
What they accept has the true writings could be a translation error, correct?
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Old 01-07-2004, 04:24 AM   #2
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I agree with you - sort of.

I think 'translation errors' is the wrong term.

It is not usually a case of looking at a Greek or Hebrew word/phrase and accidentaly mistranslating it into an erroneous English (or whatever language your Bible is in) word/phrase.

The differences between Bible versions are usually because there is no direct one-to-one translation from the original language to English. Therefore translators have to guess (using the context) what the original phrase was intended to mean.

Unfortunately, people translating the Bible are rarely objective. Most of them are Christians of one form or another, so they will tend to tranlate into the English word/phrase that best fits their a-priori theology regardless of whether that is what fit the theology of the person who originally wrote the document being translated.

As an example (and one of the BC&H scholars may need to correct me, here) consider the Hebrew word 'lhym (sorry, I haven't mastered Unicode enough to post the Hebrew characters properly). This word is usually transliterated as Elohim.

This word is the plural of El ('Lord') and in an objective tranlsation of a piece of non-biblical Hebrew text would get translated into either 'Lords' or possibly 'Gods'.

In the bible, this is sometimes the case - In Exodus 12:12, the word is translated as 'gods' when referring to the gods of Egypt (which Yahweh smites).

(Side Note - often this verse is interpreted by Christians to mean that God destroyed the statues/idols of imaginary gods that the Egyptians worshipped, but again this is more wishful thinking based on a retroactive fitting of monotheism than accurate translation. The OT uses different terminology when referring to idols and statues. The terminology used here is explicitly the same as that used for the creators of the world. Yahweh is jealous and demands that he is the only god worthy of worship, but the Old Testament is polytheistic and admits the existence of the gods of the Egyptions and the Assyians and the Babylonians. Christians simply interpret the command to worship no other god but Yahweh as a statement that there is no other god but Yahweh)

However, in Genesis 1 to 2, the same word is translated as the singular 'God' because of the monotheistic prejudices of the translator. Of course, we can't know exactly whether the original writer(s) meant 'God' or 'gods', but the Genesis 1 and 2 stories are reworkings of the Sumerian myths that contain multiple gods.

Similarly, in Genesis 1, the usual translations imply that God created the world ex-nihilo whereas the Hebrew word used would normally indicate 'fashioning' or 'organising' or 'constructing', all of which would imply that the raw materials making up the world were already in place and were simply organised by the God or gods that Elohim refers to - which would again agree with the original Sumerian myths that the story was taken from - but which would be unacceptable to someone who was promoting a religion based around a single omniscient creator.

Obviously, this sort of translatorial gymnastics occurs throughout the Bible - making the current versions use a vastly different theology and cosmology to the ones that the original writings had.

So it is not tranlstional error, so much as translational fraud.
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Old 01-07-2004, 08:18 AM   #3
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Let's speak specifically, shall we? Which texts with reference to worshipping did you have in mind? Are the various translations in question so very different that the intent cannot be grasped?

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CJD
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Old 01-07-2004, 08:39 AM   #4
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I brought this up, because the only responce I have gotten from Christians about inconsistencies in the bible, is that its a translation error.

So what about everything else? How do you judge the validity of any passage?
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Old 01-07-2004, 08:56 AM   #5
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Quote:
Originally posted by Sona
I brought this up, because the only responce I have gotten from Christians about inconsistencies in the bible, is that its a translation error.

So what about everything else? How do you judge the validity of any passage?
The Hebrew language is a pictoral language that is very difficult to translate into another language. One does their best to convey the meaning of the words but sometimes it still is doesn't convey the corret meaning very well. Tell a joke to a foreiner and he doesn't laugh because he doesn't understand the idioms used.

As for the veracity of the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls pretty well confirm it. For the thousands of years of copying and different translations it has held up. Try reading Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowel.
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Old 01-07-2004, 10:37 AM   #6
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Judging by this refernce
http://www.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dssfacts.html
It's too early to speak about the veracity of the Bible by the Dead Sea Scrolls, IMHO.
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Old 01-07-2004, 11:36 AM   #7
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Quote:
Sona wrote:
I brought this up, because the only responce I have gotten from Christians about inconsistencies in the bible, is that its a translation error.
Well, did you have certain inconsistencies in mind that do find their root in translation difficulties? Or did you have certain theological inconsistencies in mind? Maybe you were thinking of certain historical inconsistencies?

Quote:
How do you judge the validity of any passage?
I suppose you mean how I judge the intent or meaning of a passage? The answer to that (and you should know I'm packing a pretty useless degree in this stuff) is very cautiously and (hopefully) thoughtfully.

I, unlike most others here, tend to look at the Scriptures as a compilation of written and revised books, brilliantly edited together to form a complete whole. The default position, by the way, should be to take the compiled editing (redactions) seriously (by seeing how they fit into the whole), not assuming that all the books were slapped together willy-nilly by some seemingly illiterate editor(s) who couldn't see a glaring contradiction if it slapped them in the face! (forgive the cliche) [so spin, it would appear].

In other words, I judge passages according to a socio-grammatico-historical hermeneutic (with only a pinch perhaps of higher-criticism).

To bring it down even one more notch: I judge passages through a grid (just like we all do). Mine is the dynamic tradition of the Church universal.

Regards,

CJD
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Old 01-07-2004, 11:39 AM   #8
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Quote:
Originally posted by Down
Judging by this refernce
http://www.uncc.edu/jdtabor/dssfacts.html
It's too early to speak about the veracity of the Bible by the Dead Sea Scrolls, IMHO.
As I have only read comparisons of the Isaiah 53 text which was 95% word for word with the other 5% being minor sylistic changes and variations in spelling being compared with the Massoretic text written close to 1000yrs. later IMO that is quite a feat in itself. How many copies of the Bible have been written that don't agree with each other? I'm not talking about letter for letter but contextual changes. Surely there would have been several but there isn't. At least none that I have ever heard of, but then my research has been some what limited. Perhaps you know of one?
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Old 01-07-2004, 12:19 PM   #9
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Pervy the Worrier of Hobbits:

Excellent post--one nitpick:

Quote:
This word is the plural of El ('Lord')
"Lord" is used for YHWH whereas "God" is used for El. El was a primary Canaanite and Hebrew deity. Both terms cover situations where the deities have their name attached to other things such as "heavenly hosts," "mountain," "questionable credit rating." [Stop that!--Ed.]

I agree that in many cases Elohim should be plural. However, by context it appears that P and probably E use it as a singular primarily. Did they preserve a "plurality" which they made a "singular." Probably. Why P uses Elohim over, say, El in opposition to the J's YHWH keeps graduate students warm at night.

OzoneCowboy:

Quote:
As for the veracity of the Bible, the Dead Sea Scrolls pretty well confirm it.
Actually no. First you have to define "veracity." If you mean that one god or gods, Elohim, cut appart the heavens from the earth whilst a cosmic sea existed prior to that time, or that a king sacrificed his son to another god on his battlements, and his god squishes the Israelites . . . well . . . you will have a problem.

If you mean the texts we have preserve the "original" texts you have another problem. We do not have the J or E documents that the Redactor used with the P document to form the Pentateuch, for example. In some cases, the relatively late Massoretic Text [MT--Ed.] preserves a good reading whilst the Greek Septuagint [LXX--Ed.]--of which "one" text does not exist!--preserves an even better reading.

Quote:
Try reading Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowel.
I am afraid I prefer to obtain my humor from Mark Twain.

A more scholarly introduction to these matters is Friedman's Who Wrote the Bible?. Use the link and you can get Mack's book with it at a bargain. For textual criticism of the OT, I would recommend both Textual Criticism of the Old Testament: The Septuagint After Qumran and Textual Criticism: Recovering the Text of the Hebrew Bible. A standard and highly applauded work in the field is Tov's Textual Criticism of the Hebrew Bible, but I have not read it yet.

--J.D.
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Old 01-07-2004, 12:25 PM   #10
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Quote:
Originally posted by ozone cowboy
Try reading Evidence that Demands a Verdict by Josh McDowel.
Try reading The Jury is In: The Ruling on McDowell's "Evidence", a step by step critique of that book.

-Mike...
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