Zimyatin

I have a degree in Russian language (quite useless). I've learned though the study of language that you need to understand a culture and its idioms before you translate its words. Likewise, you cannot directly translate words and phrases and hope to always retain their original meaning.

For example:

English - "I have a car."

Russian - "Oo menya est mashina," Direct translation - "Near me is a car."

But more to the point, if you were to translate "its raining cats and dogs" (idyot dosht koshkii i soobakii) to Russian a native Russian would look at you a little strange. They might look up at the sky and call you crazy. The reason is simple - Russians do not have that idiom.

So I find it a bit curious that an English speaker would point to the King James Version of the bible and claim that it is the word of God (assuming you believe in sky fairies). It stretches the worn rubber band of wishful logic to believe that 17th century English men understood the common phrases (slang) and idioms of 1st century Mediterranean Jews. That is to say, even if they got all the words right, the intended meaning my be lost on us. If our current society were to crumble and a future Champollion deciphered an American-English "Rosetta Stone," what might he do with phrases like "the chair opposed the board"? Especially if he had nothing else to go on. Would he think that our furniture was animated and were disagreeable to one another?

Our translation of the bible notes that Jesus was dead for three days and then rose up. But perhaps, just maybe, possibly, as Laurance Gardner argues in Bloodline of the Holy Grail , the meaning of "rise from the dead" to a first century Jew was wholely different. It might mean that a person who has been excommuniated from the faith found a way back in.

diana

What you speak, of course, is the most dreaded blasphemy, as it is based in demonstrable truth and cannot be argued with anything more than the worn and circular, "But it's the Word of God and therefore must be as clear to us today as it was when it was written/cannot have contained any actual idioms that wouldn't make sense to us today."

I have a copy of a book that breaks down biblical idioms and says what they meant. How the author knows what they meant, however, escapes me, so I look askance at his interpretations, as well.

d

sakrilege

Even with English, meanings and phrasing change in a relatively short time. Look at Shakespeare (1600), "Wherefore art thou Romeo" is often misunderstood based on current English usage.

bocajeff

I think theists would claim that the translations were done with God's help as to avoid this problem

judge

What you are saying is correct . Although I don't see how anyone could apply it to Jesus rising from the dead, because this event is dealt with so many times in so many of the books we call the bible.

I'll give an example of where it does cause confusion.

In the gospels a guy come to Jesus , and Jesus tells him to folow HIm. The guy says "first I must bury my father".
The guys father is not dead. This apparently is an idiom that meant "Let me look after my father until he dies"

On another occaision a man says.. "my son falls into the fire and then into the water"
This is an idiom that means "He has hot and cold fevers".

There are many more which have been literaly translated and the idiomatic mening lost, but I really can't see how risng from the dead would be one.

Others may disagree