Is The Spiritual Content of Scripture Compromised by Many Modern English Translations

[JD731]

Jesus Christ, who is the God Man, said the words that he speaks are spirit and they are life (Jn 6:63). He said this about the words he spoke. He made this statement in the context of demonstrating how to understand that the miracles of God of the past are to be a metaphor of future realities. He explained this in a Jewish synagogue in Capernaum the day after he had fed 5000 with two loaves and five fishes. In this exchange with the Jews he explained that he is the bread of life and that his presence now in the physical is a fulfillment of the manna that Israel had received miraculously from God in heaven, but just the sending of it did Israel in the wilderness no good until they ingested it into their bodies. The bread must become part of them to sustain life. Once the Father miraculously sent the bread they must go to where it was and purposely eat it. These that Jesus miraculously fed on the mountain to set this lesson up had heard of his fame and had come from all directions, some from as much as one hundred miles away and they ate the bread the Father had sent on the mountain. The disciples who were traveling with Jesus could do nothing for these people until Jesus broke the bread. Then they could only serve. These were the common people on that mountain with a few of the ruling class there and who saw the physical advantage of making him the king. These are those who followed him across the sea in other ships.

So now in the synagogue with these Jews, Jesus draws the metaphor down closer and says he himself is the bread, the life, whom the Father has sent for that purpose of giving them life. He said that unless they would eat his flesh and drink his blood they had no life in themselves. The manna under Moses was only physical and must be consumed daily but the bread Jesus would give was his own body and just as the manna did no good in it's physical form on the ground and must be eaten, likewise Jesus must be on the inside of them for them to have life. As the manna was eaten every day it was not so with Jesus. His life is eternal and receiving this bread from the Father one time is all that is needed because this life is eternal. Jesus brought up the blood in this context because believers in what God says can justify the believer before the physical sacrifice of Jesus on the cross and the shedding of his blood but it cannot take his sins away because without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins. Those men in John 6 could have believed and been justified by those words of Jesus and later received the Spirit of Jesus (Acts2 &19) into their bodies and been born again, but they didn't.

1 John 5:12 He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.

Now here is my point as it relates to the KJV and all the other English translations. Jesus was giving this information to a family of people whose family tree had been highlighted all through history from Adam. They had been chosen to form the nation through whom he would get a name of being the one true God and he would receive fame among the other nations and families as God worked his miracles and revealed himself through them. He had appeared to them and through them and had made his Law known through them and all 66 books of our Bible were written by them. They did not need a new language or for the words to be updated or revised so they could understand them better. That would not help if they were not taught of the Father. God can teach the Christian the words of the KJV.

Here is what he did say to his audience and I think it remains the key for us today.

Jn 6:44 No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.
45 It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me.

These men in the synagogue were aware of all the words of the Father in the OT. They read them and heard them all their lives but many did not grasp the spiritual quality of them. They read the words but they were not taught them by God. They had performed the daily and weekly and yearly sacrifices dutifully for1500 years without grasping that God was giving them a figure of his son whom he would send to redeem them. These men who rejected Jesus that day and walked no more with him were some of the same men who called for his crucifixion. Only a very small remnant of Jews were taught by God and recognized that Jesus Christ fulfilled his OT promises of a redeemer because they not only heard the words but believed them. Jesus Christ fulfilled his promises concerning the Christ and the son of God.

My conclusion is that God has an inspired Bible with his words in it and they are spiritual truths that must be understood through those words that he has chosen.. We must be taught of God which means we must believe his words. Jesus Christ told the men in that synagogue that day that they must eat his flesh and drink his blood and then he said his words are spirit and they are life. Eternal life depends on believing them. Who thought he meant eating his flesh and drinking his blood literally? Those former disciples took it that way and left him. But Jesus Christ related that believing in his death and resurrection was the meaning of eating his flesh and drinking his blood.

Most Baptist denominations who post here do not believe the words of God the Father, especially those of the OT, and believe rather the errors of their founders and other high profile teachers. How does a man translate the spiritual content of scriptures if certain words carry particular themes and truths through the whole Bible and are changed in critical places by translators?

Jn 6:53 Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you.
54 Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day.
55 For my flesh is meat indeed, and my blood is drink indeed.
56 He that eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him.
57 As the living Father hath sent me, and I live by the Father: so he that eateth me, even he shall live by me.
58 This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live for ever.
59 These things said he in the synagogue, as he taught in Capernaum.
60 Many therefore of his disciples, when they had heard this, said, This is an hard saying; who can hear it?
61 When Jesus knew in himself that his disciples murmured at it, he said unto them, Doth this offend you?
62 What and if ye shall see the Son of man ascend up where he was before?
63 It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.

Believe the words and honor their context and stand in awe of this wonderful Book.

 

[David Lamb]

Most Baptist denominations who post here do not believe the words of God the Father, especially those of the OT, and believe rather the errors of their founders and other high profile teachers.

That seems a very sweeping judgment. Not quite sure what you mean by "Baptist denominations", especially as you then say that they post here. Individual Baptists post here. I am one of them, and I certainly do believe the words of God, whether Father, Son or Holy Spirit. I don't see how that relates to whether I read those words in 17th century English, 21st century English, Mongolian, Icelandic or any other language, providing the translation from the Hebrew and Greek is accurate.

 

[Logos1560]

My conclusion is that God has an inspired Bible with his words in it and they are spiritual truths that must be understood through those words that he has chosen..

The preserved Scriptures in the original languages have the original-language words of God that proceeded from His mouth by inspiration to the prophets and apostles.

God has not said or taught in Scripture that the word of God is bound or limited to the textual criticism decisions, Bible revision decisions, and translation decisions of any one exclusive group of men. The word of God is not bound to 17th century English [Early Modern English or Elizabethan English].

The wisdom from God above is without partiality (James 3:16), and God would not lead people to sin by having respect to persons (James 2:9) to one exclusive group of Bible critics/translators. The word of God can be and has been translated into standard Modern English.

 

[Logos1560]

Did God in effect provide English-speaking believers with multiple differing authorities in English for many years? Did those believers accept each of those differing English Bibles as its own final authority in and of itself or did they accept them as equally the word of God translated into English?

In his prologue to the Christian reader in his 1535 English translation, Miles Coverdale wrote: "Whereas some men think now the many translations make division in the faith and in the people of God, it is not so."

In their comments to the brethren of England, Scotland, Ireland, etc. in the 1560 edition, the Geneva Bible translators acknowledged that “some translations read after one sort, and some after another, whereas all may serve to good purpose and edification.“

Jack Lewis quoted Matthew Parker and Edmund Grindal as writing: “For though one other special bible for the churches be meant by us to be set forth as convenient time and leisure hereafter will permit yet shall it nothing hinder but rather do much good to have diversity of translations and readings” (Day after Domesday, p. 10).

In their preface to the 1611 KJV, its translators themselves argued that "variety of translations is profitable for finding the sense of the Scriptures."

In many churches in England, people may still have heard the version of the Psalms in the Book of Common Prayer read even if they may have read a different version of the Psalms in their homes. Many people may have continued to have more than one version of the book of Psalms bound together in their Bibles. Bibles in the 1500’s, 1600’s, and 1700’s were printed and even purchased unbound so that an unbound Bible had to be taken to a separate book binder to have it bound.

The KJV translators did not stop the reading or condemn the reading of a psalm in their churches that was read from the Great Bible, the 1602 Bishops’ Bible, or the Book of Common Prayer, which demonstrates or proves that they were not KJV-only. The KJV translators evidently rejected the modern KJV-only opinion that the truth of Scripture was compromised by having multiple, varying translations of it.

 

[Logos1560]

David Norton wrote: “Though the Sternhold and Hopkins Psalter held sway, it gives many of the Psalms in two or three versions, and they might also be heard in the PB [Prayer Book] version and the differing versions of the Bible translations. Since the Bible, the PB and the singing Psalter were often bound together, it would not be uncommon to have within the covers of one volume as many as five different versions of a Psalm, two prose and three verse. For at least a century following Tyndale’s NT the people would have had a sense that the English form of the Bible was unfixed” (History of the English Bible as Literature, p. 76).

 

[Deacon]

Many versions/many blessings

The Bay Psalm Book of 1640 was the first book printed in America.

"It's a book that was not created to be fancy or splendid or valuable in any way other than the significance of its content," says Derick Dreher, the director of Philadelphia's Rosenbach Library, one of the few institutions to hold a Bay Psalm Book. But because the congregation for which it was created literally used the book to death, very few of the copies have survived.

One of the few remaining copies was sold in November of 2014 for 14.2 million dollars.

In the introduction it says:

"If therefore the verses are not alwayes so smooth and elegant as some may desire or expect; let them confider that Gods Altar needs not our pollishings: Ex. 20. for wee have respected a plaine translation then to smooth our verses with the sweetnes of any paraphrase, and soe have attended Conscience rather then Elegance, fidelity rather then poetry, in translating the hebrew words into english language, and Davids poetry into english meetre…" [bay Psalm Preface, page 13]

Quite a while ago I formatted the Bay Psalter into a Logos Personal Book (if you use Logos, you can use it in the program) HERE

Rob

 

[Logos1560]

Is the spiritual content of Scripture compromised by many pre-1611 English Bibles and yet another one in 1611?

Was the spiritual content of Scripture compromised by the Church of England makers of the KJV borrowing many renderings from the 1582 Roman Catholic Rheims New Testament?

 

[Logos1560]

The Bay Psalm Book of 1640 was the first book printed in America.

Thanks for the remainder about the 1640 Bay Psalm Book.

I have a copy of the 1956 facsimile reprint edition of The Bay Psalm Book by the University of Chicago Press along with a companion volume about it entitled The Enigma of the Bay Psalm Book by Zoltan Haraszti.

William Barker noted that John Cotton (1584-1652) “had a hand in producing the Bay Psalm Book” (Puritan Profiles, p. 265). Zoltan Haraszti concluded that John Cotton was the author of the preface to the 1640 Bay Psalm Book (Enigma, p. 18). David Daniell maintained that translators of the Bay Psalm Book included John Cotton, John Wilson, Nathanael Ward, Peter Bulkeley, Thomas Shepard, and John Norton (Bible in English, p. 519). Many editions of the Bay Psalm Book were printed from 1640-1762. Zoltan Haraszti noted that “the work won popular favor even among the Puritans of England and Scotland” (Enigma, p. 29).

The 1640 Bay Psalm Book translated by Richard Mather (1596-1669), John Eliot (1604-1690),Thomas Welde, and others has Jehovah more than 100 times (Ps. 3:8, 4:5, 5:1, 6:9, 7:17, 8:9, 13:1, 20:1, 21:1, 24:1, 27:11, 30:1, 37:39, 40:5, 46:7, 50:1, 71:1, etc.).

 

[Wesley Briggman]

"Most Baptist denominations..."

No such thing as a Baptist denomination. Each Baptist congregation is self governed - no higarchy overseeing them.


Key Layers of a Denominational Organization
Regardless of the specific polity model, a fully organized denomination typically features several institutional layers:

• The Local Congregation (Parish/Assembly/Shul): The grassroots unit where daily worship, pastoral care, and local community life take place.
• Regional Bodies (Dioceses, Presbyteries, Districts, or Conferences): Mid-level administrative layers that coordinate groups of neighboring churches, support clergy licensing or ordination, and pool resources.
• National or Global Governing Bodies (General Assemblies, Synods, or Vatican Curia): The highest legislative and doctrinal authority responsible for setting official policy, writing constitutions or creeds, and addressing schisms or ethical stances.
• Auxiliary Institutions: Seminaries for training clergy, publishing houses, global missionary boards, and social service or charitable arms.