The NET Bible is written by Christians. Go figure, so has virtually every other translation of the Bible ever offered. If you want to challenge their interpretations, do so on exegetical and hermeneutical grounds, not based on your own theological or political motivations.

And if you want a good appreciation of how honest the men at www.bible.org were, and how faithful they remain to the text, perhaps you could take a look at Isaiah 7:14 and the accomanying notes.

Excuse me penatis? Did you offer any proof of this assertion? Show how the translation is biased, then we can talk.

How about, they should not use it, or any other single translation of the Bible without reference to others?

That sounds a lot more reasonable to me.

And BTW, while you're at it, tell us how the NIV gets the translation wrong as well please. With your vast knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek at your disposal, no doubt you are in a position to offer a rational and scholarly criticism of this, or the NET translations.

Nomad

Nomad: I see that your desire to read into the Bible, and try to discover things that just aren't there is alive and well.

I quoted the NT. What has Nomad done?

Nomad: Let's look at it this way. As Auntie Bill noted, if we are going to assume that Mary was being insulted, we should see something in her reaction to show that she has taken offence. She didn't so she wasn't is a perfectly reasonable explanation.

All Nomad has to do is quote the text of the NT to refute my argument. Unfortunately for him, he merely has resorted to an argument from silence.

Nomad: As for the rest of your non-sequitors, try not to divert the discussion of the thread please.

I quoted from the NT to support my argument. Nomad needs to read more carefully.

Nomad: The quotes you have offered have nothing to do with the incident in Cana (which doesn't even make it into the Synoptics BTW), and you constant need to throw out such red herrings is annoying.

Nomad ignores the textual evidence. Calling it "red herrings" is most disingenious.

Nomad: Stay on topic please.

I have.

Originally posted by penatis:
The "NET Bible" has a clearly stated objective: To win people over to Christianity.


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Nomad: The NET Bible is written by Christians. Go figure, so has virtually every other translation of the Bible ever offered.

1. The NET Bible website is run by Christians who have one objective: To win over individuals to Christianity.
2. How objective can Christians be in translating the NT texts?

Nomad: If you want to challenge their interpretations, do so on exegetical and hermeneutical grounds, not based on your own theological or political motivations.

One obvious problem with their "interpretation" of John 2:4 is the fact that they attempt to soften the insult. Christians have been attempting to get around embarrassing NT passages for centuries. Just look at the thousands of variant readings in the ancient texts.

Nomad: And if you want a good appreciation of how honest the men at www.bible.org were, and how faithful they remain to the text, perhaps you could take a look at Isaiah 7:14 and the accomanying notes.

Whatever their treatment of Isaiah 7:14, the NET Bible website is not interested in presenting an objective analysis of the Bible; they are interested in winning over people to Christianity. Read their propaganda. BTW, I have not said one word about their honesty. They may be totally honest in what they believe.


quote:
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{Snip baseless accusation.
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Nomad: Excuse me penatis? Did you offer any proof of this assertion? Show how the translation is biased, then we can talk.

What assertion?


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Any person who wishes to find out precisely what happened in history should use the NET Bible website with caution.
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Nomad: How about, they should not use it, or any other single translation of the Bible without reference to others?

I agree that people should use as many sources as is possible. That was not my point.

Nomad: And BTW, while you're at it, tell us how the NIV gets the translation wrong as well please.

I offered the Scholar's Version because the translators pull no punches. The NIV makes every attempt to soften the hostility in Jesus' words.

Nomad: With your vast knowledge of Hebrew, Aramaic, and Koine Greek at your disposal, no doubt you are in a position to offer a rational and scholarly criticism of this, or the NET translations.

1. I read English quite well. If that is not enough to understand the translations of the Greek texts, then all English-only speakers, including Nomad, are in deep trouble.

2. Only those who have nothing substantive to offer (as in EVIDENCE) would suggest that an extensive knowledge of Hebrew, Koine Greek, and Aramaic languages are required to read and fully understand the JC Bible.

So? Does that make them liars?

How objective can non-Christians be in translating the Bible? Don't pull this bullshit argument again penatis. You have to offer solid proofs of translational misreprentation to prove your point, and your "opinions" just don't cut it.

Hmm... why is it an insult? Did any of Jesus' followers at the time think he was insulting her? Did Mary think she was being insulted? Did any of the other Jews present think she was being insulted?

Poor penatis. Quick question, did you actually go and READ this particular passage before launching into your attack on their integrity and scholarship?

Don't be disengenous penatis. If you want to accuse someone of a bias, and have that accusation have any actual meaning, you have to imply that they are dishonest.

Allow me to explain. The most "biased" people about the Holocaust are the survivors themselves. Yet their accounts of what happened in the death camps is treated as the most reliable by almost everyone. So for a bias to truly have meaning, and to disparage an individual for that bias, you must establish that the bias fatally colours their work.

That their translation is biased.

So your translation is better than my translations because you say so? Give me a break.

How about I say my tranlsations are better than your translation and leave it at that. Prove your points penatis. Don't just assert them.

Yes we are, if we rely on only one translation and exegetical interpretation. You do this consistently of course, preferring those translations that line up with your biases, but you have yet to show how this necessitates us thinking that your translations are somehow superior to others.

Try this. Give us some scholars that thinks the NIV or NET Bibles are fatally flawed translations, and why they think so. I'm sure you will forgive us for not giving your opinion a whole lot of weight in this question.

Nomad

"If the Bible is supposed to be relevant for us, we are entitled to judge it by our standards. This sort of cultural-relativism defense seems to me to be a way of taking what one likes and leaving what one doesn't like."

Damned if we do and damned if we don't eh? Christians are either stupid, uneducated people who overlook the cultural and metaphorical implications of the Bible for an overly literalistic interpretation of the Bible, OR, now we learn that we don't take it literal enough and that to actually find out what was meant in the cultural context, we are mistaken idiots who don't know how to interpret our own Bible.

Seems like a clever way for skeptics to inflict inconsistent hatchet jobs on the Bible specifically and Christianity generally.

Make up your minds.

Do you consider the JC Bible to be perfect? Make up your mind.

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Originally posted by penatis:

1. The NET Bible website is run by Christians who have one objective: To win over individuals to Christianity.


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Nomad: So? Does that make them liars?

No. "Liars" is Nomad's word, not mine.


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2. How objective can Christians be in translating the NT texts?
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Nomad: How objective can non-Christians be in translating the Bible? Don't pull this bullshit argument again penatis. You have to offer solid proofs of translational misreprentation to prove your point, and your "opinions" just don't cut it.

Nomad didn't answer my question.


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Nomad: If you want to challenge their interpretations, do so on exegetical and hermeneutical grounds, not based on your own theological or political motivations.
One obvious problem with their "interpretation" of John 2:4 is the fact that they attempt to soften the insult.


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Nomad: Hmm... why is it an insult? Did any of Jesus' followers at the time think he was insulting her? Did Mary think she was being insulted? Did any of the other Jews present think she was being insulted?

I gave textual evidence demonstrating Jesus did not get along with his family. That perfectly explains why Jesus was hostile to his mother at the wedding in Cana. Nomad may use any conjecture he wishes to explain away the evidence.


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Nomad: And if you want a good appreciation of how honest the men at www.bible.org were, and how faithful they remain to the text, perhaps you could take a look at Isaiah 7:14 and the accomanying notes.
Whatever their treatment of Isaiah 7:14, the NET Bible website is not interested in presenting an objective analysis of the Bible; they are interested in winning over people to Christianity.


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Nomad: Poor penatis.

I am not poor.

Nomad: Quick question, did you actually go and READ this particular passage before launching into your attack on their integrity and

I have not attacked anyone. I have stated that the NET Bible website has a Christian bias. Anyone who goes to the website and reads their material can readily see this for themselves.

Of course I answered your question penatis. Go back to my post and refer to my illustration of the Holocaust survivors and the stories about the death camps.

Personally, I think "objective" scholarship is a chimera, and you have yet to prove that it matters in any event. Even conceding the biases of both the Christian and non-Christian scholars, the real question is, has this bias affected their translations?

If it has, you have to prove how.

So, again, the NIV and NET Bible's show that there are two perfectly reasonable ways to interpret the idiom used by Jesus at the wedding in Cana. You have chosen one, Christians have chosen another. You have yet to demonstrate why your choice is better than ours.

Quote:

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Nomad: If you want to challenge their interpretations, do so on exegetical and hermeneutical grounds, not based on your own theological or political motivations.

You threw out a bunch of red herrings without addressing the direct and plain text of the passage in question penatis. You seem so eager to tell Christians not to do this, then when you do it yourself, you are quite blind to your hypocracy.

So again, look at John 2, and tell me how we MUST read this as an insult. And if you can, demonstrate from within the Gospel of John that Jesus and his mother definitely did not get along. After all, I'm sure that you know that John is independent of the Synoptics right?

Translation: Why of course I haven't gone to the web site to see if the NET Bible gave a fair and honest treatment of this passage, eventhough their translation could be seen as injurious to the fundamentalist Christian cause.

I understand your desire to not be troubled by the facts penatis, but if you continue to imply that the NET Bible translators are not doing solid scholarship in their translation of the Bible, I am going to continue to brow beat you about your obvious unwillingness to examine all of the facts before drawing your conclusions.

Nomad

Hello Layman, and welcome to the Boards.

What you are seeing here is called the "Any stick will do" fallacy. GK Chesterton, in his book Orthodoxy discovered during his research as an agnostic into the religion of Christianity, that the opponents of Chrisitianity tended to use two mutually exclusive and contradictory arguments against our faith on a regular basis. In his words, it was as if they were describing a man that was both too tall and too short, too fat and too thin, to violent and too passive, ect. He came to the conclusion that the problem was not with Chrisitanity per se, so much as that any stick would do to beat Christianity with.

As you have noted, it leaves Christians in a no-win scenario when trying to argue rationally with such people, but such is the nature of the beast I suppose.

It is worth noting that Chesterton wrote his book in 1908, so not much has changed in the last hundred years, at least.

Yup. Sure is.

Then again, what's a sceptic to do if he can't use every weapon in the arsenal right? Even if some of the weapons appear to contradict the others.

Don't hold your breath waiting for this to change.

Welcome again Layman. And be well,

Nomad

My point is simple: the cultural-relativism defense of embarrassments is simply a way of taking what one likes and leaving what one doesn't like, because it is embarrassments that get defended by this means. It's simply a case of "any stick will do"; it's always literal if one likes it, allegorical or culturally-relative if one doesn't like it.

Furthermore, the Bible itself does not contain a guide on how to interpret it, how to tell the literal parts from the allegorical parts, how to tell the parts intended for all people from the parts intended for the immediate audience.

There is some internal evidence that the writers of the Bible did not know that they would be having readers centuries after they had written; which is all the more proof that it was not "inspired". This comes from taking certain sorts of things for granted that people centuries later might not take for granted.

For example, there is a part of Leviticus that forbids cross-dressing, but it does not state which sorts of clothing are appropriate for each sex. If this was meant for all time, that part would have been more specific in describing how to make the distinction, because clothing styles have tended to vary over space and time. However, it wasn't.

However, in Exodus, shortly after the 10C's, there's a part that gives a hint as to what kind of clothing was common; we are told that one must not climb upon an altar because one would expose oneself to it if one did. Elsewhere, probably in Leviticus, there is something that states that the High Priest must wear special undies when inside the Holy of Holies for that reason. So it was apparently not very common for the men in the OT to wear pants.

That part of Leviticus is sometimes used to demonstrate that women ought not to wear pants, and that only men may do so. But as I've shown (1) that passage is not explicit enough and (2) the men in the OT apparently did not wear pants much of the time, if at all.

And I'm sure that other sacred books suffer from this sort of problem; to me, the US Constitution has some troublesome vagueness here and there. What counts as "cruel and unusual punishment"? "Excessive" bail? "Excessive" fines? Just to name a few things from a document that some regard as a sort of sacred book.