sweetpea7

http://www.commonenglishbible.com/

I came across this the other day and was just curious what peoples' thoughts on here would be about it. I like it because I think that the Bible should be understandable to most people and still as accurate as possible, and that seemed to be the honest goal of the translators. You can read some passages at their website and it really does read more smoothly than any translation I have seen. Whatever one's thoughts on the value of the Bible, the more difficult it is to understand, the more easy it is to exploit or frighten people with it. I am hoping a newer, more accessible translation will take the Bible's power away from preachers and more into the hands of the laity.

Andykiwi

Modern English just makes it's stupidity all the more clear.

sweetpea7

Yeah, maybe. But I was hoping it might deflate some big preachers who like to use the Bible to scare people. Maybe by making "it's stupidity all the more clear" people might just view it for what I believe it to be--a big story book with some stories better than others.

Sheshbazzar

Might make for 'easier' reading, but the further it moves away from the peculiarities of the original phrasing, the more unrecognised and uncomprehended detail becomes lost in translation.
It becomes nothing more than a watered down 'children's version' of the original texts.
One which any real Bible student has to compare every single verse against older manuscripts to determine what details have been omitted or compromised in the interest of easier readability and sectarian predilections.
Of course it serves the interest of the clergy to 'dumb down' the laity through provision of such 'simple' texts, that can easily be over-ridden by clergical 'knowledge' and authority. It serves as a mechanism of maintaining control.

Basically it is a 'version' especially composed for lazy and ignorant mouth-breather sheeple with intent to maintain them in that state.
This one is designed to put more power into the hands of the preachers. Knowledge (in this case, of the details present in the older texts) is power.

Would you like these fundies to sell you their revised, updated, and modern language 'version' of The Bill of Rights and Constitution of The United States?
I'm sure that they would just love to oblige you.




.

sweetpea7

From what I have read on their website, I do not see where this translation was done by fundies. It appears to have been done by Bible scholars from mainline prostestant and catholic churches who made an effort to be faithful to the texts while updating the English to be more comprehensible for the majority of people. Most Christians that I have known, especially fundies, are not true Bible students. They cannot even comprehend the KJV. They have not attempted to read the Bible because the Elizabethan English is beyond their grasp. They depend on the preacher for their information. I think part of the KJVO crowd's real issue is that they don't want the Bible to be too understandable to regular people.

I do not see, from what I have read on their website, where the text is dumbed down. I think that The Living Bible and The Message are good examples of it being dumbed down, whereas the NIV and NASB are theologically biased. I believe the best translation is the NRSV, but it just does not use contemporary English in some parts. Giving people the ability to read and understand the Bible is important, imo, for helping them see the contradictions and the inconceivableness of many parts of the Bible. At least that is what I hope.

OLDMAN

This is just another chance to "Clean it up" take care of all the nagging inconsitancies, that they like to claim are translation problems. Don't let them off the hook.

sweetpea7

OLDMAN, you could be right, but it's hard to tell without having read it. I don't see any evidence that what you are claiming is true from what I have seen of it.

Toto

Common_English_Bible

sweetpea7

I don't see a problem with the Textual Basis as described above for the average Bible reader. For a serious student of the Bible, Divinity school, or Seminary, yes. For the average Christian, especially for the average fundie? Not at all.

Also, I like how they clarified the meaning of 'Son of Man'. When I was a little girl in Sunday School I would always ask my mom what Son of Man meant. She didn't know and she had been a fundie Baptist all of her life. No one in the church explained it.They just told us that Jesus was the Son of Man. I would wager that most fundies don't really understand this phrase.

DCHindley

Doesn't the Five Gospels do the same thing (replace "son of man" with something along the line of "human being")? The problem is that a Gospel may present something the author heard that Jesus said in a context and with a meaning that was different than the context/meaning it had when the author heard it, not to mention how Jesus may have actually said it (if he did say it).

I think the term "Son of Man" has some sort of meta significance for the Gospel authors, and this should be preserved in the translation. If scholars think that in its original context Jesus was simply using a common idiom for "man" or "person" and thus speaking of himself in the 3rd person, that should remain in the footnotes. Jesus is made to say "The son of man (meaning Jesus) has no place to lay his head" (with the ironic meaning "I am as a common man with no place to live, although I am in fact the Son of God"). But that is not good enough. What that really means, we are told by the social gospel advocates, is that "Humankind (changing "a man" into "a human being") has no place to lay its head". It transforms the saying from a theological statement about Jews being unable to recognize their own messiah into a commentary on the human condition caused by the exploitative ruling class that crushes the will of the simple people, boo hoo hoo.

DCH