Kindest Regards, Blazn!
I think this raises an opportunity for another good discussion. Just a couple of points to begin with:
Translation is difficult, Conrad Fisher said, in part because language is based in culture. A joke that is hilarious to Cheyenne speakers can be translated to English and a listener will ask, "Where is the punch line?" he said.
Another struggle is that some words in the Bible aren't used today.
"You try to come as close as you can," Conrad Fisher said.
The translation is idiomatic, meaning it is done more in ideas than literally. For example, in the scripture where Abraham made the altar, the translation into the descriptive Cheyenne language is roughly that he piled rocks.
There are markers in the translated Bible in English, so that readers will easily be able to locate a book's name or a well-known story. And, not all of the words were translatable, such as "Egypt" and people's names.
The Golden Rule - Do unto others as you would have done unto you - translates to the equivalent of "Be nice to people the way you have been nice to. It is written that way by Moses and also by the prophets."
Now, keep in mind that this Cheyenne translation is itself taken from a translation. Goodness knows, there are how many English translations alone. Let's see, there are modern translations like the NIV and Living Bibles. There are colloquial Bibles such as the "'Hood" Bible I learned about some 12 or so years ago, written in street vernacular. Then there is the King James Bible, itself a compilation drawing from the earlier English translations such as the Breeches Bible in addition to the Textus Receptus.
Now, on one hand I suppose it is a good thing, translating the Bible into various languages. A co-worker was kind enough to give my wife a copy of the New Testament in Chinese. This is a good thing, helping make the word available
to those who seek it wherever they may be…to a point. That point is: "lost in translation."
At least the KJV had in its favor the fact it was commissioned by due governmental authority: King James. It was begun because of a petition to the King by a Puritan, whose name is long lost to my memory. This is all recounted in a book by Gustavus Payne, "the men behind the KJV." King James commissioned a committee of 75 as I recall Christian scholars, fewer than 10 were Puritan, the balance were Anglican. And the Archbishop of Canterbury presided over all and had the final say. A Puritan protest is what initiated the KJV version, and while a token representation was present, the Puritans were pretty well run over roughshod by the Anglicans. Commissioned a scant few years after the turn of 1600, it took almost ten years as I recall to present the final version to the King for his approval, in 1611. The mark of the Anglican church runs all through it, even though I am convinced their hearts were in the correct place. Words like "bishopric" are hardly what one would find a person such as Paul uttering. Further, Elizabethan English hardly translates equivocally from Greek and Hebrew. Which is why one sees words in italics in the KJV, that was the translators way of letting the reader know those words were inserted to make the text flow better in the English language. The italics are *not* used for emphasis, as I commonly hear misinterpretation. Still more, the intertestamental Apocrypha was *included* in the original version issued in 1611, with books such as 1 and 2 Maccabbees, Bel and the Dragon, and Ecclesiasticus.
To top the history of the KJV off, a feud broke out between the Puritans who had held out such high hopes for a unified English translation, and the Anglican Archbishop who did his level best to insure political legitimacy for the Church of England. The end result was a persecution that resulted in the banishment of a number of Puritans, who fled England in a leaky little boat called the Mayflower, destined for a new promised land called America. The Puritans were aware of the new colony at Jamestown in Virginia, settled in earnest in 1605. Plymouth Rock was settled in 1620. And that's the rest of the story, to borrow a phrase.
My point being, that even as much as I hold to the KJV, there are translational issues that are overlooked by the rank and file. I even commonly see well-intended but seriously misguided pastors who have no clue about these historical and linguistic issues making statements as though they are fact. When the reality is a misunderstanding of a misinterpretation.
There is at least one Bible that is available that takes the reader back to the Greek and Hebrew (for the most part, I have seen one deliberate mistranslation but it escapes me which chapter and verse). It is called the Interlinear Bible, and it translates the Hebrew and Greek verbatim as well as can be done. But it is clumsy to read, so the lazy Christian will pick up the text that is easy to read, no matter that it is full of mistranslations, and begin thumping. How often I hear Christians prattle on about having the truth…when the truth is, they don't have a clue what they are talking about.
Fuel for discussion.
