spin

Let me reiterate a statement I made earlier:

There is a conflict for any translator which involves rendering the words used and the intended idea of the writer. [Would] you translate[] "pain in the butt" ("He's a real pain in the butt") based on the individual words or would you try to capture the idea? It's a conflict between over-literal and over-interpretative. The first misses the idea and the second distorts it.

I think hjalti is showing you what over-literal is like.

hjalti

Hair-correct!

sweetpea7

I agree with you, spin. I think both extremes are bad. That is why I was doing my best to explain concept for concept interpreting. It's possible I may have gotten caught up in my point and became long winded and humorless. I am guilty of that quite often. I feel silly for not getting it the first time

Magus55

Just glancing at that, they still translate Arsenokoites as same-sex intercourse in 1 Cor 6, which I believe is inaccurate. Most Bible publishers are conservative so they have to attack gays to keep their Bibles selling. But it makes it untrustworthy knowing translators intentionally change meanings to attack groups of people.

sweetpea7

Magus55 or anyone else, do you know of a different translation? Thanks.

I looked up the NIV, KJV, ESV, NLT, and NRSV. All of them translate it with the same meaning. The Bible says a lot of stupid things, like that women shouldn't speak and should have their heads covered in church. That is just the correct translation. It doesn't make it morally right, and it doesn't mean the translators are a bunch of bigot conservatives who want to sell Bibles, either.

hjalti

magus, wanting to condemn homosexuality isn't the only bias in play. Liberal Christians are very eager to translate it as not refering to homosexuality.

We know that Paul used the OT and I don't think it's implausible that Paul was thinking about something like Lev 20.13 where the words that make up arsenokoiths are used to describe same-sex intercourse.

spin

(Shakes head once again.)

Iskander

Are you feeling well?

avi

Thanks.
In my opinion, you were not verbose. Your detailed explanation, with a description of work in the courts was very well stated. thank you.

Umm, however, I must say, I really disagree, profoundly, with your approach.

Problem 1: Rose colored spectacles. If one does not provide at least, BOTH the literal translation, AND a subsequent interpretation, perhaps in the vernacular, then one risks imposing upon the scenario, one's own ideas, instead of faithfully communicating the original intent.

problem 2: passage of time. hjalti gave us a dozen illustrations of literal English translations, which obviously made no sense, to illustrate the necessity of avoiding absolutely literal translations. Thanks, hjalti. well done, but, this idea will inevitably lead to a huge error, ultimately, because the context is essential for any idiom to have meaning. We don't appreciate the context of the ancient text. We must translate the text literally, and if it appears awkward, clumsy, or unintelligible, then, we need to accompany the literal translation with notes, as spin suggested, two pages ago.

Those notes, over time, will themselves become archaic, and unintelligible.

The goal of ANY translation, is to find clarity. Sheshbazzar's insistence on accuracy and fidelity is not misplaced, but right on target. The Christians and Muslims have both altered the original Hebrew text to fit their own agendas. The OP focused on a new translation, which once again, dilutes, alters, and changes the meaning by mistranslating "son of man" as human.

It may be true, though I vigorously dispute it, that the phrase "son of man" is today regarded as synonymous with "human", but I am of the opinion, that one must not assume that the ancient Hebrews thought that.

"son of" anything, implies heredity, obviously an important issue in the old testament. Human simply refers to any person, without regard to ancestry. Heredity is of minimal or decreased importance in a society with genetic cloning, and single parents giving birth after artificial insemination. It was, in my opinion, not a trivial matter, in an ancient tribal society with laws directed according to one's heredity--sperm of david--> messiah.

As I mentioned earlier, in reply to Toto, this topic is about mistranslation, not oral communication. I have no idea what ancient Jews talked about, or did not talk about. Taboos are common in ancient society. I am commenting on a systematic attempt to forge the ancient texts, to conform to theological goals, and I illustrate that attempt, by citing this mistranslation from Ezekiel 1:3, which translates the tetragramon as kurios, though the proper translation, into Greek, is theos.

1. ancient: I am writing this message, Toto, on an ancient computer, one that is ten years old. The property of ancientness, is based not upon an actual time, but on a relative consideration.

2. Dura Europos:
Clark Hopkins, page 192, describes the stone relief, not a temple, called Zeus Kyrios.
I am sorry, Toto, but, in my opinion, no stone mason wrote anno domini 31, in the year CE 31.

This is either a forgery, or a fraud, or, perhaps a simple translation error by Hopkins, with the actual date given according to some other reference, and then translated by Hopkins as a.d. 31. The fact that Hopkins reports the date as a.d. 31, leads one to suspect whether or not he may have erred as well, in writing Zeus kyrios.... If it really is engraved, or chiseled, I would then ask, what is that actual date of composition, and is this person, who is chiseling in both Aramaic and Greek, perhaps reflecting his/her Aramaic mother language?

A little further down the same page, 192:
avi

sweetpea7

avi, we will have to agree to disagree. I would just like to mention that the transliteration is provided in the footnotes of this translation, as it is with most translations of the Bible that are worth anything.


This is the opposite of what I was saying. The scholars who wrote the translation, and I, are saying that "son of man" has always been synonymous with "The human one" or "human being". The word for word transliteration has not, all of these years, conveyed the proper meaning due to the phrase being an idiom, which makes shared cultural understanding essential.

I think what may be difficult to grasp is that in interpreting, it is not true that every word has to be translated. It feels this way, but again, language just does not work that way. Look at the example wiki gave under the explanation of idiom. If one translates the words "kick" "the" "bucket", one will have mistranslated the correct meaning of the idiom "to die". To interpret the idiom, accuracy and fidelity demand that not only is a word omitted, but the literal words entirely dropped from the interpretation! And clearly there is no bias of any kind going on.

Accuracy and fidelity are exactly the right goals, and insistence upon them is as it should be. It is impossible, linguistically speaking, to achieve these goals in a translation if one holds that any language is "inviolate". It is impossible in the courts, impossible for day to day interaction, and certainly impossible for translating centuries old texts from cultures centuries removed from our own.

I have no ax to grind here, and no theological point I am trying to make, merely a linguistic one.