Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: bnr-fos!bmers58!davem@watmath.waterloo.edu (Dave Mielke) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Seventeenth Century Language Message-ID:Date: 29 Sep 89 05:15:19 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Bell-Northern Research, Ottawa, Canada Lines: 96 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu 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]