Originally posted by gb93433:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by michelle:
Peace and love to you all in Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour!
I just don't understand something you said. You said that you have/had a hard time understanding the KJV, but you don't have a problem understanding the greek? This doesn't make any sense to me, because it takes many people a very long time, sometimes much of their life to get a basic knowledge and understanding of a language. My husband tells me this alot, that those in China, and other countries, have been taught english language from the time they were young children, and still have problems grasping many of the idioms in our language. How if they have studied english for so many years, and still not fully understand english, can you be able to fully understand the ancient greek without even having native speakers to rely on? Not only that, but the greek used then was much further removed from the greek of today. The tranlsators of the KJV were much closer to that time than those of today.
love in Jesus Christ our Lord and Saviour,
michelle
The Chinese can understand Hebrew much better than we can. But we can understand Greek much better than they can. Greek culture is closer to our culture and the Hebrew culture is closer to the Chinese. </font>[/QUOTE]gb you are exactly right. I have pretty much given up on Biblical Hebrew. Ouuuuuch! I have an excellent book: Biblical Hebrew--A Text and Workbook by Bonnie Pedrotti Kittel, Vicki Hoffer and Rebecca Abts Wright. It is great, but HARD!
Michelle,
I probably didn't make myself very plain. I did not mean to say that I understood Greek better than the English of the KJV. And this is where we may differ, but what I was trying to relay was that as English speaking people, it is natural for us (even us non-KJVos) to compare translations with the KJV. It has become a standard of sorts simply because there is no doubt that it is the Word of God.
However, in my humble opinion, I take it that the Greek manuscripts are closest to the original manuscripts. I have many different variants of Greek compilations including the TR (as defined in the 1800's) and of course Nestle's and Westcott-Hort and others. More out of hobby or (trying to learn) I will translate small portions (a verse for instance) to see if it matches with the Greek.
Sometimes when reading the ESV, I see a verse that just doesn't "sound" like a verse I have read before. I will read the KJV and there seems to be a variation. So, then I pull out my books (or computer program, depending on the version) and look it up and try to translate it. Upon translating it in at least the TR and the Nestle's or Westcott-Hort, I will then compare what I have determined it says with both the ESV AND the KJV. Surprisingly, even though the two may sound somewhat different, I find out they say the same thing. Often, I find out that I was taking a more modern approach to the wording of the KJV, when in reality, I misunderstood some of the older words.
This is where I have come to believe that God has preserved His wonderful Word and Message in more than one place. You may disagree and that is entirely your perogative. That is why we are here to discuss these issues.
To answer your question about Greek, no I cannot understand it even close to the KJV, but I use it as a final authority when doing my comparisons, and I do admit that I tend to gravitate towards the TR, but also find that the differences are so minute that I have personally found no doctrinal changes.
In reading Greek, I have to take a sentence and write it out and then hit the refence books. It is similar to reading a newspaper when you are learning how to read. I would take the daily newspaper and pick out words that I knew what they were and underline them. As I learned more and more I could underline more words until eventually I was actually reading it.
The same thing is happening for me in Greek, but I am still at the early stages of recognizing individual words. The problem with Greek is that it uses a lot of "word phrases" (for lack of a more scholarly term) that when put together in a certain fashion change the meaning. Without knowing these "Word phrases" it is easy to make errors when translating. Plus, as with all foreign languages, the grammar is just all messed up.
It is with great difficulty that I can translate and get the grammar correct, but I can see what it says and compare it with what I read in English.
I have an excellent book on Greek "word phrases" that lists phrases by tense and meaning. It has helped my understanding of Greek a lot. (don't have the book here so I can't remember the name.)
Anyway, that is really what I meant and hopefully this provides you with a better view of how I actually look at translations and the underlying Greek (or Hebrew) text.
