Yeshua1, even if we were to grant that, coulda-woulda-shoulda does not prove the point you made in post # 15. The KJV translators are not the ones who transliterated it. Immersion is in the range of meaning of the English word "baptism," which means it is not a mis-translation. (It is a fair argument if one wants to posit that it obscures the meaning of the Greek word.)
-
Welcome to Baptist Board, a friendly forum to discuss the Baptist Faith in a friendly surrounding.
Your voice is missing! You will need to register to get access to all the features that our community has to offer.
We hope to see you as a part of our community soon and God Bless!
Do Bible Translators deliberately Mistranslate?
- Thread starter McCree79
- Start date
Yeshua1/JesusFan/DaChaser, why are you fixating on the KJB? Virtually every English translation before and after, and presently, translate it the same.
I don't know what "baptist" taught you that nonsense but you might consider no longer to listening to such nonsense.
How many times have I heard "When the Anglicans translated the Greek word, 'baptizo,' for example, they were afraid to translate it as 'immerse.' So they simply transliterated it as 'baptize.' Most Bible-believing Baptists would consider that a mistake."
It never ceases to amaze me that so called scholars, who obviously consider themselves to be well educated, can spout such nonsense. Any person who knows how to read can look up the word "baptize" in the Oxford English Dictionary (any good college library will have one) and see that the word "baptize" did not enter the English language in 1611 via a transliteration of the Greek word "baptizo", but rather, had been in common usage in England for over five hundred years, having come into the English language via the French "baptiste", at the time of the Norman invasion under William the Conqueror in 1066 A.D.! A look at the word "immerse" in that same dictionary will reveal that at the time the King James translators were working, the word immerse did not mean the same as it does now, to submerge in, but at that time meant "to merge with" as a sponge soaks up water.
As Jerome so correctly pointed out, virtually every English translation prior to the KJV used "baptize" or "baptism."
Nonsense! #1 Study. #2 Think. #3 Post!
Thanks for this information, as did not know this until reading your posting here, but would you agree that it would make more sense to at least in a more modern version translate it as immersion/immerse, as that is the actual meaning of the used term?
I was just suggesting that the Kjv chose of that word made it the "official" way to render it, despite it really meaning to immerse.
According to the 1559 Book of Common Prayer (which governed liturgy at the time of the KJV translation) immersion was the preferred mode of baptism: Then the Priest shal take the Childe in his handes, and aske the name; and naming the Childe, shal dippe it in the water, so it be discretely and warely done ...
The exception: And yf the Ghilde be weake, it shall suffice to powre water upon it, saying the foresaid wordes ...
It is unclear to me exactly when affusion became the preferred method among the Anglicans; I suspect it crept along upon the strength of the "exception" until it became predominate.
But while the Baptists and Anglicans disagreed upon the mode of baptism heatedly in the mid-17th century, the most central disagreement was not on the mode, but on the subject. The subject for Anglicans was children; the subject for Baptists was adults, that is, only those capable of mental assent could be baptized.
The Book of Common Prayer did not even have a baptismal ceremony for adults until 1662, and that was because the English were colonizing lands and had to have a liturgy to baptize the natives.
The only significant Bible translation that I'm familiar with that insists that the Greek be rendered as immersion is the American Bible Union translation of 1865, which was published by Baptists and, to a much lesser extent, Campbellites.
The exception: And yf the Ghilde be weake, it shall suffice to powre water upon it, saying the foresaid wordes ...
It is unclear to me exactly when affusion became the preferred method among the Anglicans; I suspect it crept along upon the strength of the "exception" until it became predominate.
But while the Baptists and Anglicans disagreed upon the mode of baptism heatedly in the mid-17th century, the most central disagreement was not on the mode, but on the subject. The subject for Anglicans was children; the subject for Baptists was adults, that is, only those capable of mental assent could be baptized.
The Book of Common Prayer did not even have a baptismal ceremony for adults until 1662, and that was because the English were colonizing lands and had to have a liturgy to baptize the natives.
The only significant Bible translation that I'm familiar with that insists that the Greek be rendered as immersion is the American Bible Union translation of 1865, which was published by Baptists and, to a much lesser extent, Campbellites.
Then apparently you never read my post #13 to which I referred you. rsr's post #27 has some good information along this line as well.
It was the Westminster Assembly that excluded the proper mode of baptism, replacing it with the Reformed mode, sprinkling. The Westminster Assembly's Directory of Public Worship allowed only "powring or sprinkling."
Directory for Public Worship - Use by the Church of England
"the Directory was deeply unpopular with the majority of the population, and some of the best evidence for its use can be deduced from negative reactions to it, in particular the dramatically reduced baptism rate in those parishes where the Directory was adopted."
I think you are probably right, though I think that expediency, not rigorous theology, and complacency and ignorance among the clergy accounts for the change. I also posit that the Baptists' insistence upon immersion as the only proper method for baptism may have accounted for a reaction against the practice.
However, some Church of England ministers maintained immersion into the 18th century at least, except in the case of truly "weak" infants. I have read an account of a CoE minister who declined to affuse because the infant was not "weak" and the mother simply said she did not want the baby immersed. He declined, but the family found another minister less scrupulous in in his understanding of the Book of Common Prayer.
The Westminster divines' authority was only fleeting, being confined to the Commonwealth. It may be that, having succumbed to expediency, that the restored Anglican clergy found it much easier to affuse than to immerse and the populace had become accustomed to it through common use.
Still, it is still common Anglican practice to affuse, not asperse. But immersion is still an accepted method among both Anglicans and even Catholics. This is only anecdotal, but there seems to be a minor trend among the faithful Anglican remnant (in the UK) toward immersion.
Dear JonC,
I took my Hebrew with Dr. Jack Lewis of the Harding University Graduate School of Religion. Dr. Lewis was on one of the translation committees for the NIV version, the early version. He had a PhD from Hebrew Union in Hebrew and a PhD in New Testament. He was a hard taskmaster and even had us doing some simple translation our first day in the Master of Arts class.
Long story short; Dr. Lewis said when they would divide out small sections of a book of Scripture for the committee, usually 5 on the committee, invariably there would be a 3 to 2 vote on the translation of a single word. The three that voted one way would have their translation in the body of the text. And the 2 that lost the vote would have their translation in a footnote or textual note with an explanation of why it was noted.
This has made much sense to me as the newer and newer translations have come out and as I have checked my own translations of the different texts over the years.
And I was especially proud that Dr. Allen Black also of Harding Grad School for teaching us about the different readings of the critical textual notes of the Nestle-Aland Text. The "A," "B," "C," and "D" at the bottom of the page. These two classes and profs were well worth the time, money, and effort I spent. I do consider that I have had a "top drawer" "Class A" education. Even though part of it came from the Churches of Christ seminary. Learning is learning wherever the learning is done.
Thanks be to the Lord for all He has allowed me to learn and experience.
Just my thoughts!!
rd
From the KJV translators:
Lastly, we have on the one side avoided the scrupulosity of the Puritans, who leave the old ecclesiastical words and betake them to other, as when they put washing for baptism, and congregation instead of church; as also on the other side we have shunned the obscurity of the Papists, in their azimes, tunic, rational, holocausts, praepuce, pasche, and a number of such like, whereof their late translation is full — and that of purpose to darken the sense, that since they must needs translate the Bible, yet by the language thereof, it may be kept from being understood. But we desire that the Scripture may speak like itself, as in the language of Canaan, that it may be understood even of the very vulgar. (Translators' Preface to the King James Bible, part 15 of 15)
Where they being more politically correct, then truthful?
By "washing" did they mean submersion, or were they attending more to inclusion in order to cleanse?
No, as noted above, when the Puritans took power their Westminster Assembly replaced that proper mode ("dippe" BCP) with the mode of Geneva, sprinkling, for nearly fifteen years.
No, but there is a new one that does, The Passion Translation (TPT):
biblegateway.com/blog/2017/10/the-passion-translation-new-testament-now-on-bible-gateway/
"BroadStreet Publishing is launching the New Testament with Psalms, Proverbs, and Song of Songs in its ...The Passion Translation (TPT)...on October 31, 2017, the 500th anniversary of the Reformation"
Romans 6:3 The Passion Translation (TPT)
Or have you forgotten that all of us who were immersed into union with Jesus, the Anointed One, were immersed into union with his death?
So they did choose to translate Baptism based upon meeting needs of the time, and not what it actually means?
Interesting!