Like I said in my last post, I used to think anyone who doubted that every single word in the Bible had been translated accurately (by anyone I mean any christian) was a heretic. I mean, c'mon, God is big enough to make the Bible exactly accurate, right?
That's true. He could, if He wanted to.
But somehow I think that He didn't. Do I believe that the original texts (of which we have none) were word for word what God wanted written down? Sure. Why not? No one sees them, no one knows for sure... but why not?
Some people have ventured to say that if we HAD the original texts there would be problems with people making idols out of them and worshipping the "ORIGINAL TEXTS" instead of worshiping God. I can see that. Some people worship the Bible the way it is now. Some people worship certain versions. Some people put more emphasis on what the Bible says than on Jesus, or the way He lived or... fill in the blank.
Anyway, since we're heading to the mission field (of sorts...) we have a ton of friends who are/will be missionaries and many who are working in translation. Ohhh translation.
Here are two common problems that are argued over and over again.
When Jesus says "I am the bread of life..." do you just leave the passage as it is if the people you are translating for NEVER eat bread? Do you change it to rice, or something else appropriate? The word bread would be meaningless to them, and yet if you change the Word of God, is it not the Word anymore? Is every other word except "rice" then inspired? How far is too far?
Jesus said "I am the Good Shepherd... blah blah blah sheep." what do you do in a culture that may have never or rarely ever heard of sheep? Maybe they raise pigs. Do you just insert PIG where sheep used to be and Jesus now says "I am the good pig-herder?" Don't laugh. :) It's serious. :) Well, this one is a little more serious anyway, because of the picture of us as SHEEP. Pigs are smart animals, resourceful and do well on their own. Part of the point of this being about sheep (I believe, anyway) is that sheep are dumb. They follow each other around til they die. They can't live without a shepherd. Soooo do you end up having to explain sheep to every person in this culture? Or do you just go with pig or something else comparable?
I used to assume that when translators translated the Bible they just found the closest word and voila! Boom, it was done. There is so much more to it than that. Even if they go back to the "original" greek and "original" hebrew (which, let me recap, is not from any "original" documents at all) they still have to deal with trying to fit a book full of cultural references into another culture. Those issues haven't just started, either - they have been going on since the very first translation.
In conclusion... I'm not trying to say that the Bible is a book FULL of errors and we need to disregard everything that it says. I'm not saying that the main message of the Bible is an any way negated by a few (or more) translational or cultural or whatever errors or misinterpretations. I'm not even saying that what the Bible says to be true is negated by the totally fallible and error filled way we (as a fallible and error filled people) tend to use it and apply it and read it.
There are plenty of christians, though, who get up on some crazy high about some obscure passage of scripture and insist that everyone who is a reallly trulllly honest-to-goodness christian had better obey OR ELSE they aren't one...
This needs to be something that is, at the very least, considered.
God is all powerful. Man is totally fallible. And God's Book? A few man-made errors don't make it any less of God's book. I think they just remind us not to take OURSELVES so seriously and not to take our own interpretations of scripture as... well... scripture.
Comments (11)
well if you knew your hair would turn white and you would suddenly be old
i think the thing that the culture tends to be mis-informed or ignorant or both about is that when someone speaks of today's translations, what they mean is that the current translations we have in our possession are translations of translations... when in fact, the translations of today are translations of the manuscripts... the 6000 portions... not to mention the writings of the early church fathers who quoted the NT like nothing else to the point where if we had the writings of the church fathers alone, we can get about 95% of the NT just from their writings...
so to talk about translations needs clarity when the secular culture talks about it in ignorance or in evil motives (either or needs to be discerned)
bravo though on your post...
A related question I've been pondering for some time is just how much education we should expect the average church-goer to undertake in order to understand the Bible.
@SirNickDon - Very good point. As I was ranting this out I was thinking the whole time about how our culture has a cultural divide with the Bible just as much as other cultures/languages it is being translated into now. I mean, how many of us are shepherds and understand sheep? Great question... more to ponder. :)
We also need to remember that the "original" Greek and Hebrew that we could go back to know is subject to errors of copying since for centuries everything was copied by hand. You know that there were people who would accidentally miss a word or letter or something somewhere. In addition, its entirely possible that some monk somewhere was copying and copying and then one day decided that it'd be fun to add, change or delete a few words just as a joke and even if everyone around knew that it had been changed someone years later might come along and unknowingly use it as a source to copy or translate from.
Another thing, I've often wondered about why so little was written about Jesus. It just never made sense that so few people would have written an account of his exploits even considering that literacy rates were probably not all that high and that not everything would have been breathed into by God. Then I heard somewhere that there were other "gospels" written by followers and that the Church decided to eliminate them from the Bible when it was being standardized for reasons that are apparently now unknown. I would love to know what criteria were used to establish the bible as we know it today. No, I don't believe that what is in the Bible is the entirety of what God would have breathed into people, that just seems a little far fetched to me.
I'm getting away from the point of this post though. So getting back, when translating languages you can't just change words for numerous reasons ranging from wording patterns to context defined words to culturally meaningful words like you pointed out.
heh...the infallible/inerrant debate has always made me laugh a bit for the same sentiment as you voice here: who cares? It doesn't apply to what we have, so sure, why not :P
In terms of using Pig rather than sheep, etc. (which I'm sorry, I laughed...then I read "Don't laugh," but it was too late *hangs head*)...The translations used in America reference sheep and bread, etc, but the only sheep I've ever interacted with were at petting zoos when I was 5 and the concept of bread being the main course of a meal or the primary source of nourishment is foreign as well. That doesn't mean I can't understand the passages. I'm familiar enough with the concepts to glean meaning, even if they aren't as vivid as they would be to that time, place, and culture. I see no reason why the same is not true of other cultures outside both ancient Israel and America.
Plus, from my understanding, it's common for missionaries, esp. translators, to translate children's books since many in their target audiences can't read, which it's not that difficult to make a "learn to read" book involving some dumb-as-brick sheepies :)
And if the culture is literate, well, it's even easier to show youtube videos of fainting sheep to get the point across :P
Some interesting thoughts here. I agree with sheepthatsblack when saying that we certainly can glean an understanding of the original language concepts, even though those specific cultural things may be foreign to us. For instance, much of Revelation is hard for us to understand, but for those of Hebrew nationality, many of the terms and imagery used in that book were very familiar to them. Thankfully, much study has been done into understanding the culture of that time, so with footnotes in our Bibles and solid commentaries we can make the connections ourselves :) Perhaps that same thing can be done in other nations where the Bible is currently being translated into their language: commentary to explain the traditional meaning of phrases like "I am the bread of life". The thousands of ancient manuscripts that have been translated into what we know today as the Bible (yes, not original Greek & Hebrew, but as close as we're going to get) have a 99.5% accuracy rate among them. The "errors" that have been found have been limited to misspellings of inconsequential words and word combinations (i.e. forever and for ever). Because these manuscripts "error check" each other, I would venture to say then that people haven't changed important words over the centuries while spending a boring evening at the monastery :)
Also, I would definitely say the Bible is inerrant and infallible. In that God has given us "everything we need for life and godliness through our knowledge of him who called us by his own glory and goodness. Through these he has given us his very great and precious promises, so that through them you may participate in the divine nature and escape the corruption in the world caused by evil desires. For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness, love. For if you possess these qualities in increasing measure, they will keep you from being ineffective and unproductive in your knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But if anyone does not have them, he is nearsighted and blind, and has forgotten that he has been cleansed from his past sins." II Peter 1:3-9
God's word is TRUTH, motivating us to what Peter speaks of in these verses. Yes, there will be differences on secondary doctrines among conservative Bible scholars, discrepancies on translations, and (like you mentioned Rachel), fallible people who claim they know everything there is to know about God and the Bible and legalistically assume we should all live a certain way to be a Christian. But the most important thing is to take God's word as absolute truth and live life how God desires us to live (which He reveals through the Word and prayer) and NOT to decide to live our lives the way WE want and then fit in the portions of God's Word we think fit our lifestyle, disregarding the things we "don't like". After all, it's not all about us, right? :)
As far as the Bible being the only thing God has revealed to man (I think someone referenced this earlier) or containing everything Jesus did, John 21:25 states that "there are many other things which Jesus did, which if they were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that could be written." Certainly there are parts of Jesus' life or ministry we know nothing or very little about (for instance, what happened to him between babyhood and the temple when he was 12?), but what is already in the Word is what we NEED to know in order to make us wise for salvation (can't think of the reference right now). I guess when we get to heaven we'll see it all clearly--I certainly look forward to that!
Interesting post, Rachel. I can tell you're thinking some things through.
Oh you are amazing lady. You're ending point ---> my thoughts, too. Hehe, love ya!
Oh! Did I tell ya?! You're a blessing to all the new-er baby mama's here in MI.. without even know it! ;) The tips ya have from your mama adventures I'm passin' along. (aka: diaperswappers.com & bumbos & etc, etc.) Haha, you rock! :) And thanks! ;)
I think you made some excellent points. I also appreciate how you state your point of view in a manner that is confident but does not demean others.
I share many of your thoughts, although I lean a bit more toward the idea that I think we'd find most of the same errors in the original manuscripts.
I originally held the "Sure, why not?" view of inerrancy. These days, I'm more comfortable with the idea that the Bible is a collection of writings by people who had a direct experience with God. There may be some detailed errors, but I believe they wrote as close to the truth as they could. Honestly, this gives me MORE confidence in the God described in the Bible than when I struggled with inerrant/not inerrant. I much prefer the idea that the writers were just like me, even in their experience with God speaking through them.
I also find that by releasing the need to defend the Bible as inerrant, there is more room for the Holy Spirit to speak to and through me. It also protects me from making the Bible an idol. Many do, you know. To revere anything as spiritually "perfect" it to equate it to God - IMO, of course.
@mrcolorful - Funny you should mention that... my husband is just reading a book for greek class called The Text of the New Testament - It's Transmission, Corruption and Restoration. He was just reading about Erasmus and the Textus Receptus that the KJV is based on. Apparently there are all kinds of things that Erasmus just made up! :P Take that and smoke it, KJVers. :P I used to know more about why we have the books in the Bible now that we do but I don't remember. All I know is that growing up all I learned about the "rest" of the "biblical" books was that they were wrong and evil for reasons I do not remember. Maybe I should look into that.
On a different note - how are you doing these days? :)
@rachelserine - If you find out more about why the books were chosen I'd love to hear about it. I could look into it on my own but I have other interests that always win out. I've commented to a few KJVers about the poor basis for that version (I used to know a little more than I do know, though not near as much as that book covers) all I got in response was accusations of being an agent of Satan and frantic screaming about how it had to be correct because its been around for a long time (then wouldn't egyptian documents be even more accurate?) or how God wouldn't have allowed mistakes in the bible (then why are other versions so terrible and why is each version different?).
I'm not doing too bad. I've been better at various times in the past but I'm doing better than I was a few months ago.