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From: bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke)
Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Seventeenth Century Language
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Date: 29 Sep 89 05:15:19 GMT
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In article  geoff@pmafire.UUCP (Geoff Allen) writes:
>I found this to be a very convicting statement.  How many Christians do
>you know who can even read one word of Greek?  Let alone Hebrew.  

Psalm 119:11 says "Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not
sin against thee.". I can only reliably hide the Word of God in my
heart that I might not sin against Him, i.e. such that it can be
essentially unconsciously recalled, understood and applied, if I know
that Word in a language that is extremely familiar to me. While knowing
a verse in the original Hebrew or Greek may be more accurate, its
meaning as it applies to my every day life in that language has far
less impact on me than its english translation. I am far better off
with an english translation which has not distorted the original
meanings too much than with a highly accurate, if not original,
manuscript. The King James translation is one such translation.
 
Translations like the NIV, while they are apparently easier to read,
have done major injustices to some passages. One such example is 1
Corinthians 7:1. The NIV says that it is good for a man not to marry.
The original says that it is not good for a man to touch a woman if he
is not married to her. The problem with translations like the NIV is
that those who did the translation thought that they could figure out
exactly what God meant and help us to understand it. They must have
forgotten their human inferiority and, at least temporarily, assumed a
higher level of authority than the Holy Spirit Himself, the only one
who is truly qualified to help us understand the infinite mind of our
Creator. Another extremely likely scenario, and I do not mean to
ascribe any disrespect to the translators of the freer translations but
am merely extrapolating my own human weaknesses, is that they
unconsciously misinterpreted the meanings of some passages in order to
avoid facing some particular sins in their lives.
 
Another point worth considering is that it would be impossible for me
to involve my children, especially those who are very young, in my
Biblical studies if I insisted on doing them in some language which
they are not being taught to use throughout their day-to-day
activities. I want them to hide the Word of God in their hearts too so
that each of them can minimize his sins against his Creator.
 
I also want to be able to effortlessly call to mind applicable
Scriptures when witnessing to my colleauges at work or to someone whom
I may encounter out on the street, or wherever else, in a way that will
be meaningful to them. We are not called to edify only ourselves, but
rather to go out into all the world preaching the Gospel in a tireless
search for those who were lost.
 
I have made the personal decision that I can have the best of both
criteria, the use of my native language and a high degree of accuracy
and minimal loss of original meaning, by using the King James
translation of the Scriptures. Those who are truly serious about
studying the Scriptures may well have a tremendously difficult time
learning a completely different language, but will not have that hard
of a time learning the nuances between old and modern english. A person
who cannot learn that "thou" means "you" will never succeed at learning
the whole bunch of new word mappings, grammatical structures, and even
concepts that come with any foreign language. I thank God that He has
written the Bible in such a way that it can be reliably translated into
any other language, for having insured that those translations are
readily available for all of us to use, and for having granted us the
skill of reading so that we can use them. I also thank Him for having
given us concordances so that we can, with minimal if any knowledge of
the original languages, clear up any errors that the translators may
have made.
 
    Dave Mielke, 613-726-0014
    856 Grenon Avenue
    Ottawa, Ontario, Canada
    K2B 6G3

[I looked in all the commentaries I could find in the Rutgers library,
to see what various commentaries had to say about the Greek of I Cor
7:1.  Literally, it is "It is well for a man not to touch a woman"
(RSV).  However there are issues of interpretation with "touch" and
"woman" (as well as the earlier part of the verse, but I didn't
realize until now what the issue was, so I didn't take enough notes to
give a coherent account of that part).  The Greek word behind "touch"
has several meanings.  All commentators (and my Greek dictionary)
agreed that in this context it implies sexual intercourse.  The only
difference in opinion was whether "touch" was a euphemism or whether
intercourse should actually be considered one meaning of the word.
The Greek word behind "woman" can also mean "wife", and in fact is the
same word translated "wife" in 7:2.  No commentator that I looked at
saw Dave's suggested meaning of "married woman", i.e. someone else's
wife, nor did any of the translations that I have translate it that
way.  If you take the meaning to be "woman", then you get the RSV
translation, which is followed by most modern translations.  If you
take the meaning to be "wife", then you get something whose literal
translation should probably be something like "it is well for a man
not to unite himself with a wife".  Translating it "not to marry"
loses the explicit sexual reference, but seems to capture the meaning
as needed by this context.  NIV is not alone in translating it as
"marry".  TEV (Good News Bible) does also.  However the majority
interpretation seems to be with the RSV.

--clh]