I guess I am baffled, and perhaps a little bit confused, as to why there is still a debate over English translations of the Bible.
At first, I found myself laughing inside at the idea that a translation in English, and particularly the editions and revisions of the King James Version, would even still be considered as "the preserved Word of God in English. My two years at Bible college (even the ultra-right-wing fundamentalist colleges that I attended) taught me that there were now manuscripts available, closer to the actual date of the original New Testament writing, that were not available to the KJV translators. There have also been significant language changes in English and major developments in Greek and Hebrew studies that obviously render any modern English version far more accurate and true to the original text than the King James Version. I more or less dismissed the use of the KJV partly because I have a strong, bitter taste in my mouth from my childhood church pastor, who insisted that any other version was of the devil, and from the professors at the Bible colleges I went to, who also insisted that the KJV was still the best, and whom I rejected as also being ignorant due to the poor quality of the rest of the education there.
However, I read an article about eight or nine years ago, and can't recall the author, but I am sure it was in a secular publication (I wasn't reading anything Christian back then), who made the claim that Bible translation, especially in English, is nothing more than a matter of what your particular bias is, and that whatever it happens to be, you will give your support to the translation that supports your bias. He claimed that fundamentalists and extreme evangelical conservatives hug to the King James because it supports their bias, and doctrines have been developed around "simplistic" interpretations of verses either because of their antiquated terminology, or because they were in the manuscript used for translation. He claims that the liberal, or left side of Christianity, tends toward the more "thought for thought" translations and paraphrases. Moderates, he says, opt for the NASB or NRSV, depending on their background. All translations, he stated, are the product of bias.
So, my resolve then (well, not exactly "then", but in the past year or so that I have rededicated my life to Christ) was to refresh the rusty and almost gone Greek, and attempt to discern from the early manuscripts what the writers really meant. Then I find out that some versions use one set of manuscripts related to one kind of "text form" and there are other versions who use a different, variant "text form" and there are even discrepancies among the Greek texts, and there is no really objective way to distinguish between the two (or however many variants there are) text forms as to which one more closely represents the originals.
Is this true? Is there more than one manuscript form of the New Testament? And if so, is there some kind of standard that can be applied to determine which actually represents the originals? Or, is the conclusion of this writer correct, that there is no way to determine such and what we have in the "Bible" may, or may not, be everything that the original writers intended?
Now, I am not going to go back down the path to consider that the KJV is either the most accurate English version, since it is clearly outdated just because of the use of language. But if I want to read an accurate representation of the work of the original writers, which English Bible should I be reading? The best arguments I've heard up to this point support the NRSV but it is sometimes hard to read through.
And, here's another very real question--will I even get accurate information here, or is everyone on this board biased toward their own opinions and thus the scholars that support it?
[ March 13, 2002, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: kwob02 ]
At first, I found myself laughing inside at the idea that a translation in English, and particularly the editions and revisions of the King James Version, would even still be considered as "the preserved Word of God in English. My two years at Bible college (even the ultra-right-wing fundamentalist colleges that I attended) taught me that there were now manuscripts available, closer to the actual date of the original New Testament writing, that were not available to the KJV translators. There have also been significant language changes in English and major developments in Greek and Hebrew studies that obviously render any modern English version far more accurate and true to the original text than the King James Version. I more or less dismissed the use of the KJV partly because I have a strong, bitter taste in my mouth from my childhood church pastor, who insisted that any other version was of the devil, and from the professors at the Bible colleges I went to, who also insisted that the KJV was still the best, and whom I rejected as also being ignorant due to the poor quality of the rest of the education there.
However, I read an article about eight or nine years ago, and can't recall the author, but I am sure it was in a secular publication (I wasn't reading anything Christian back then), who made the claim that Bible translation, especially in English, is nothing more than a matter of what your particular bias is, and that whatever it happens to be, you will give your support to the translation that supports your bias. He claimed that fundamentalists and extreme evangelical conservatives hug to the King James because it supports their bias, and doctrines have been developed around "simplistic" interpretations of verses either because of their antiquated terminology, or because they were in the manuscript used for translation. He claims that the liberal, or left side of Christianity, tends toward the more "thought for thought" translations and paraphrases. Moderates, he says, opt for the NASB or NRSV, depending on their background. All translations, he stated, are the product of bias.
So, my resolve then (well, not exactly "then", but in the past year or so that I have rededicated my life to Christ) was to refresh the rusty and almost gone Greek, and attempt to discern from the early manuscripts what the writers really meant. Then I find out that some versions use one set of manuscripts related to one kind of "text form" and there are other versions who use a different, variant "text form" and there are even discrepancies among the Greek texts, and there is no really objective way to distinguish between the two (or however many variants there are) text forms as to which one more closely represents the originals.
Is this true? Is there more than one manuscript form of the New Testament? And if so, is there some kind of standard that can be applied to determine which actually represents the originals? Or, is the conclusion of this writer correct, that there is no way to determine such and what we have in the "Bible" may, or may not, be everything that the original writers intended?
Now, I am not going to go back down the path to consider that the KJV is either the most accurate English version, since it is clearly outdated just because of the use of language. But if I want to read an accurate representation of the work of the original writers, which English Bible should I be reading? The best arguments I've heard up to this point support the NRSV but it is sometimes hard to read through.
And, here's another very real question--will I even get accurate information here, or is everyone on this board biased toward their own opinions and thus the scholars that support it?
[ March 13, 2002, 11:23 PM: Message edited by: kwob02 ]
