11
Apr

Confidence in the Bible

   Posted by: Mark   in The Church

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I have been doing some reading lately regarding Bible translations (probably to the chagrin of my parents — oooh, they are so patient with me and my tangents). I recently found two articles that contribute some useful thoughts to the study of Bible translating in general, posted by Tim Challies:

• Confidence in the Bible
• Confidence in the Bible (Part 2)

It seems that one of the most important things to remember about translation in general is that it is not possible to “translate” precisely from one language to another. That is, it is not a scientific process in which a word in Language A can be translated to an equivalent word in Language B. Understanding this does provide some softening of the notion that “this is the only translation that is any good in such-and-such language.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 10:35 am and is filed under The Church. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

10 comments so far

fannie
 1 

Egad! Does that mean I’m on the outs, too? We even go to an SBC church!
;-)

April 11th, 2006 at 11:38 pm
Chad
 2 

Your parents may not be the only ones “chagrinned” (I don’t think that is an actual word) by this particular tangent…..

April 13th, 2006 at 5:04 pm
Grumpie
 3 

We often seem to think that new is better when in fact it is just further away from Adam…

April 13th, 2006 at 6:02 pm
Mark
 4 

Fannie: You were on the outs long ago…

Chad: ;-)

Grumpie: We often seem to think that older is better, though the old was “new” at one time. How is the “new” but “farther from Adam” computer running? Better than the “old” one? Hee hee.

April 13th, 2006 at 9:42 pm
fannie
 5 

Chad, we need to talk! ;-)

On the whole “older is better” theory . . . Know what any of these English words mean?

babag
babery
baccaceous
baccate
bacchante
bacciferous
bacteriotropic
baculus
badaud
badigeon
badinage
baffona
bagasse
baimaiden
balandra
balaniferous
balanism

April 13th, 2006 at 11:33 pm
Biff
 6 

Hey if older truly is better than let’s just forget the KJV and go back to the Bishops Bible…

8^)

April 14th, 2006 at 7:32 am
Grumpie
 7 

The new computer is running quite well, but then Adam didn’t need one to accomplish all he had to do. He used his brain and it worked a lot longer than this thing will. ;^)

And do you really think we have improved the English language over recent years?

April 14th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Grumpie
 8 

Biff – wouldn’t you rather just sit and talk to God about it? Or even Adam?

April 14th, 2006 at 8:24 am
Grumpie
 9 

Now I understand the quest for a different translation. I never said old was better, that was something you read into my statement. Don’t read scripture that way.;^)

April 14th, 2006 at 11:23 am
Mark
 10 

The English language (any live language) would be better viewed as having “changed” over the years, not improved or declined. And our understanding of Greek and Hebrew has undoubtedly improved in the past few hundred years.

I doubt most scholars today could give definitions of words such as “cassia,” “implead,” “knops,” “wen,” or “wimple,” not because our language has deteriorated, but because it has changed.

True, you didn’t state that older is better, but I read it as implied in the statement that “new is better” is wrong because new is farther from Adam.

April 14th, 2006 at 12:19 pm

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