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IF a Pastor or Teacher knew Biblical Hebrew and Greek well, why still use English translations then?
- Thread starter JesusFan
- Start date
An English speaking person who knew Biblical Hebrew and Greek WELL would be at a wonderful advantage to increase their own study of the Bible.
But lots of people who speak and understand another language still read in their native language. I speak French well enough to read it sometimes, but I read in the language I learned to speak as a child.
Just because a pastor might know the Biblical languages does not mean he reads them well enough to read casually as grammar differences and more could be a hindrance to casual reading.
But lots of people who speak and understand another language still read in their native language. I speak French well enough to read it sometimes, but I read in the language I learned to speak as a child.
Just because a pastor might know the Biblical languages does not mean he reads them well enough to read casually as grammar differences and more could be a hindrance to casual reading.
My Senior pastor models both, as while He preaches and teaches out of English translations exclusively, for his personal studies and devotions uses Hebrew and Greek texts, as he told me one time, if you neglect tp keep using them, will get so rusty basically forget how you once knew
reminds of when heard Vernon McGee say before could always spot a recent pastor graduate, as he would be spending all of his pulpit time trying to show the crowd why John in His prologue confirmed Jesus was God in the Greek text , and few actually learned anything that day
Just see knowing well Biblical Hebrew and Greek as real aids to Pastor and teachers. but the important thing be if used in sermons and messages to use those texts as ways to conform doctrines, but [each it at a level all could profit from them using their texts for preparation
Saved421
Member
The reformers would highly reject this idea of going to the Hebrew/Greek.
They wanted the plowboy to read i and understand.
They called scholars hereticks for going to the Heb/Greek to change things and stuff.
Once there was a man who preached a sermon and made 13 reasons why this should not be translated this way. Well, the translators told me the reason why.
We have the final authority in one book, in English and no need to go back to the dead languages.
This is not true. You got it all wrong. You will have to redo it all.
David Lamb
Well-Known Member
I don't think it's true that the Reformers were against going to the original languages. The comment about the ploughboy was made by bible translator William Tyndale, who was the first to translate the bible from its original languages of Hebrew and Greek into English. (This year marks the 500th anniversary of his translation.) Earlier English versions had been made from the Latin translation, so were translations of a translation. I don't agree that we have no need to go back to dead languages. The bible was not originally written in English, so if we want English translations, it's best to make them from the original Hebrew and Greek.
Not true. The reformers appealed to the Hebrew and Greek as the authentic Scriptures for trying and evaluating all Bible translations.
KJV translator Lancelot Andrewes would go to the Hebrew or Greek or to the Latin Vulgate in his sermons.
KJV translator Miles Smith is known sometimes to read from an edition of the Hebrew Old Testament and translate the Hebrew directly into English.
Lancelot Andrewes (1555-1626), a KJV translator, wrote: "Look to the original, as, for the New Testament, the Greek text; for the Old, the Hebrew" (Pattern of Catechistical Doctrine, p. 59).
Gustavus Paine pointed out that another KJV translator John Rainolds (1549-1607) "urged study of the word of God in the Hebrew and Greek, 'not out of the books of translation'" (Men Behind the KJV, p. 84). Mordechai Feingold cited where John Rainolds wrote: “We must diligently give ourselves to reading and meditating of the holy scriptures in tongues in which they were written by the holy Spirit” (Labourers, p. 14). Feingold also cited where John Rainolds asked: “Are not they blind, who prefer a translation, and such a translation before the original?” (p. 121).
David Lamb
Well-Known Member
Catholic dogma? Translating the bible into any language other than Latin was frowned upon by the Roman Catholic church. As far as I am aware, none of the KJV translators was a Roman Catholic.
The KJV translators rejected and refuted the one-perfect-translation-only theory of their day--the Latin Vulgate-only theory.
Writing for all the translators in the 1611 preface to the readers, Miles Smith noted: “If anything be halting, or superfluous, or not so agreeable to the original, the same may be corrected, and the truth set in place.”
Miles Smith observed: “No cause therefore why the word translated should be denied to be the word, or forbidden to be current, notwithstanding that some imperfections and blemishes may be noted in the setting forth of it. For whatever was perfect under the sun, where apostles or apostolike men, that is, men indued with an extraordinary measure of God’s Spirit, and privileged with the privilege of infallibility, had not their hand? The Romanists therefore in refusing to hear, and daring to burn the word translated, did no less then despite the Spirit of grace, from whom originally it proceeded, and whose sense and meaning, as well as man’s weakness would enable, it did express.”