manimal2878

I am trying to find a list of commonly mistranslated bibkle words.

There is a lot of study of this going on with the word hell in the new univerisalist movement, so much so that new bible tranlations have no or few referances to hell, they the original words sheol, gehenna, hades, grave, unseen or whatever?

THere is also stuff about the word church and that it's original meaning was group or cingrafgation thus breaking the belief in the need for a hierichal church.

Then there is stuff about wthe original word for work being translated one way to support protastents and then another when it would have supportes RC's.

I have googled a bunch for a simple type list, found lots of articles but no list type document, i have heard there is one or some kind of pamphelet out there, any of you uys got any hints?

manimal2878

on a side note, in lookinf for this list i have came across a lot of angry christians who seem to resent the bible errors being corrected in new bible version and hurting there precious KJV.

You would think with there appeals to inerrancy they would be happy to have the errors corrected, but somehow they are not errors but what god intended, weird!

yalla

My favourite "mistranslation'' is in Paul's Galatians 1.16. in the RSV:
god..."was pleased to reveal his son [..] me,..."
Put the word "to'' in the bracket and it conveys a certain meaning.
Insert instead the alternate translation for the Gk., which I have read is more valid, and the meaning changes considerably and to the detriment of orthodox interpretation.
The alternate is "in".
Try it.See what I mean?
I have also read that when the text says "servant" the correct translation is frequently "slave".

Julian

That is correct. The word in greek is δουλος and it means slave but is frequently (always?) translated as servant. Paul also address his congregations as αδελφοι which means brothers and is translated as brethren in KJV (an okay translation) but as brothers and sisters in NRSV.

To the credit of NRSV they always put the proper translation in the footnotes. There are other examples which can be found with some searching on google.

BTW, you also see �γιοι, meaning holy ones but frequently translated as saints which is somewhat anachronistic.

Julian

Joan of Bark

The most common mistranslation is of the sixth commandment word 'RATSACH' (sp?). Some Bibles translate the word as 'kill'; others as 'murder'. Most modern scholars lead toward 'murder' as being more consistent with the rest of the OT. Keep this one in mind whenever arguing with believers over the importance of the Ten Commandments.

vsop44

there is at least one book that quotes mistranlations , I got one from my library that I perused but unfortunately I can't remember the title .
My favorite mistranslation is Matthew 19 : 24
.....It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man......

The mistranslation , here , is pretty obvious , Kamelis in greek is a cable or a big rope and kameles is a camel .
I'll try to find the title of the book for you Manimal .

manimal2878

thanks, that would be awesome.

Diogenes the Cynic

In 1 Corinthians 6:9 and 1 Timothy 1:9-10 the Greek words, malakoi and arsenokoitai are often falsely translated as "effeminates" and "homosexuals" respectively.

Malakos literally means "soft," but it was often used to indicate moral softness with a particular implication of a lack of moral discipline. To be even more specific, it was used to describe guys who were not the masters of their domains, if you get my drift (I've been told that it still carries this implication in Modern Greek, and translates roughly as "wanker").

It could also be used to indicate womanizers but there is no evidence that it was used to indicate effeminate men or homosexuals.

Arsenokoitai is a huge can of worms unto itself. It seems to have been a term coined by Paul himself and its xact meaning is unknown. It is a compund of two words, arsenos ("male") and koites ("bed"). The word translates literally to "male-bedder." Most of the attestations for the word subsequent to Paul occur in vice lists which do not provide enough context to determine the exact meaning. It might seem like a no-brainer to infer a meaning of homosexuality but it's not that simple. For one thing, the suffix koites pops up in other sexually derisive compounds. You see it used with stuff like "whore," "horse," "mother," etc. It's always derisive and "_____ fucker" is not an unreasonable approximation of the tone The thing is, though, that it always indicates the penetrating partner, never the passive. This would suggest that arsenokoites was not meant to describe both partners in an act, but only the aggressive one, which would let out a blanket definition of homosexuality.

Moreover, there are some instances where the word is applied to heterosexuals. In one case, it's used to indicate male prostitutes with female clients. In another, it's lamented that husbands are engaging in arsenokotes with their wives.

The weight of the circumstaniial evidence is that the word was associated with male prostitution and arguments are made both for the word indicating the prostitute and for it meaning the John.

In the {i]Apology of Aristides[/i], the word is used to refer to rape of Ganymedes by Zeus, and that would lend more weight to the argument that the term referred to the aggressor.

My guess is that it referred to pedarasty and to the common practice in Greek cities of men patronizing young male prostitutes. I might be wrong, but the point is that the exact meaning of arsenokoites is unknown, and any confident translation of the word as "homosexual" is quite problematic.

judge

Not only that but Mar Bahal a tenth centry lexiconographer (is that right?) tells us that Gamla in Aramaic is a large rope used to bind ships.

judge

For what it's worth i think the same argument can be made in the Aramaic (for a future time when everyone agrees with me ...:-) )

Here is Victor Alexanders translation of corithians 6:9

Even for those who hold to greek primacy the peshitta is still an early witness of the thinking.

1 Timothy 1 ,9-10 from Aramaic