How would you translate the Bible?

I think many people regard the Bible as something that is immutably sacrosanct, that only one version is true, always is true, and those words cannot mean anything else besides what is written on the page.

While I do admire this type of reverence some have for the Bible, I think they forget that the Bibles they buy at a bookstore had to come from somewhere. I mean, crates of Bibles don't come floating down from the sky and land on a bookstore's doorstep; they get shipped from the place they were printed, printed where the document was inserted, compiled before printed, and translated from the original languages before they were compiled.

At the source, the Bible was written in Kione Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic.  Today, modern scholars translate the Bible from these original version into everything from Afrikaans to English to Russian and even Chinese.  The problem with translating the Bible from one of its original languages into English (or whichever language is native to you) is the same problem all student of languages know: some things just get lost in translation. 

For example, if you want to express (in Spanish) your passionate, ardent desire for a certain special someone in your life, you'd say "Yo te amo", literally "I love you".  At the same time, if my friend's mom tells her son "Te quiero mucho" before he leaves the house, the literal translation would be "I want you much".  The closest English equivelent of "Te quiero mucho", however, is "I love you". 

Scholastic, diplomatic, and corporate translators battle this problem all the time: trying to convey the levels and nuances of meaning from one language to another.  For example, the word "repent" typically means  "changing one's mind after experiencing a deeply grieved conscience".  Etymology.com has the following entry regarding the origin of the word:

repent (v.)
c. 1300, "to feel such regret for sins or crimes as produces amendment of life," from Old French repentir (11c.), from re-, here probably an intensive prefix (see re-), + Vulgar Latin *penitire "to regret," from Latin poenitire "make sorry," from poena (see penal). The distinction between regret (q.v.) and repent is made in many modern languages, but the differentiation is not present in older periods.

In the original Kione, however, passages in the Bible translated as "repent" use a different word: "metanoia".  According to biblos.com, meta means "behind with", while noia means "understanding, mind". So "metanoia" = "behind with the mind", or putting away the old mind, the old thoughts, understanding and perspective of the world.  This is the same concept when Jesus teaches that new wine must be put in new wineskins (Matthew 9:27); repenting doesn't mean changes from a guilty conscience, but becoming something completely new and different. 

Like I said, some things just get lost in translation, not to mention what happens when you make a translation of a translation of a translation.  Hawaii's Pidgen Bible is actually an English translation into Hawaiin pidgen, or a translation of a translation of a translation.  Imagine playing the children's game telephone, but instead of trying to repeat exactly what was said, try to say the same thing using different words.  By the third person, you'd almost be guaranteed that what was said is not exactly what was said.

Does this mean that all translations are wrong and we need to read the scriptures only in their original languages?  Not at all, because every (English) translation I've read carry the same gist of the Bible message: God cares for and adores you, and wants a relationship with you. :)

That being said, there are some people I know who pretty much exclusively read the Bible in its original languages who deeply want to desire the greater intricacies revealed in God's word.  If you have any questions as to the wording of a scripture, I'd try to find the original Greek word used and then try to find other passages that use the same word.  Eventually you can get a sense of context about how the word is used, and the many multi-faceted meanings from a particular word or phrase.

Thanks for reading!  Next week we'll continue talking about the Bible and its different translations.

Why Should I read the King James Version?

Many people regard the King James translation as the most superior English translation of the Bible.  And they would be right-- 400 hundreds ago.

There are many people who say that reading any other version of the Bible (besides the KJV) is a sin.  Most of their claims are based on the fact that it is the original English translation, which is wrong (that credit goes to the Wycliffite translation in 1384), or that one must read the Bible in its original language, which is also wrong (it was originally written in Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic), or that it has remained unchanged since its first publication, which is also wrong (it was first published in 1611, but underwent many revisions until 1769).  Modern English translations are far superior, and here's why:

First, the KJV was based on a handful of sources: the Aleppo and Leningrad Codex for the OT, and then the Textus Receptus, Theodore Beza's revised Textus Receptus, Erasmus's Novum Instrumentum omne, and (arguably) the Latin Vulgate for the NT.  

While the KJV was based on (about) six sources, modern translations use about 5,000 sources for just the NT alone. 

Not only that, but the Greek manuscripts that the KJV translators used were dated around the 11th century; today, we use manuscripts from the 1st and 2nd century.  That's not including the manuscripts we use for the OT (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), which are half a millenium older than our Greek sources.

Second, our understanding of Kione Greek is much better.  For several hundred years, scholars literally thought that the version of Greek the NT was written in was some sort of a celestial language.  It wasn't until relatively recently that scholars figured out that the Greek used to write the NT was a commoner's dialect.  Non-Biblical manuscripts were uncovered that were written in the same language as the Bible, but they weren't from the New Testament.  Comparing the non-Biblical and Biblical sources, modern scholars have a greater understanding of Kione Greek. 

Picture trying to learn English just reading Michael Crichton novels, and then discovering Stephen King, George RR Martin, Rowling, Steinbeck, Chaucer, and Shakespeare.  Your understanding of the language would expand in scope, much like modern scholarship in understanding Kione Greek.

Lastly, the English language has evolved, while the language used in the KJV hasn't.  Don't believe that languages evolve? Let's look at the word "soft".  Today, it's an adjective that describes something smooth, plushy, or gentle.  Back in Shakespeare's time (the time when the KJV was published), "soft" meant "hold on a moment".  That's why in Romeo and Juliet, Romeo says "Soft! What light from yonder window breaks?" 

In 1 Corinthians 13 of the KJV Bible, the word agape is rendered as "charity", while modern translators use "love".  The difference in this is huge, because agape describes a love without boundaries, while today we understand "charity" as being giving, yet this "giving-ness" doesn't require emotional investment.  If you can think of an English word that means the same thing, then perhaps modern translators should use it, but for now we are stuck with "love".

Despite this, are there any good reasons to read the KJV?  Several, but perhaps not for serious scholastic or spiritual guidance.  The first one would be because someone wants to learn more about the Bible, and they are stubbornly sticking to the version they are familiar with (myself at one time), so you have to accomodate them. Another is because there are few translations which are as dramatic and evocative as the KJV (which is why Hollywood almost exclusively quotes from it).  The last one would be to compare and contrast the modern translations, the KJV, and the original Greek, to convince the person stuck on reading the KJV that they are being stubborn and hard-headed.

We'll continue talking about the various translations, starting with a brief overview of the most popular English translations of the day.

Thanks for reading, and see you there!

How We Got the Bible: How the Ancients Read it

After you've studied philosophy for a while, you begin to ask some pretty weird questions; some of which we take for granted.

No, I'm not talking about "Why is the sky blue?" (That's a question for science), I'm talking about "What proof do I have for my own existence?  How do I know that I'm not a brain in a jar given the illusion that I'm experiencing life? What proof do I have that good and evil exists, outside of relying on the opinions of others (argumentum ad populum), or myself (when I know I've been wrong from time to time?"

These are very good questions, which we'll look at later (I keep saying that, don't I?), but for right now I want to ask a question that (I think) most people wouldn't normally ask about the Bible: why does it have chapters and verses?

I think most people take for granted that the Bible has chapters and verses, like how we often take for granted the existence of good and evil.  The problem is that the ancient Israelites didn't (and some still don't) read the Torah (first five books of the OT) or Nevi'im (pretty much everything else from the OT) with chapters and verses; they read it from a VERY LARGE scroll.  That's the reason why in Luke 4:16-21 Jesus unrolled a scroll and had to find the place where the prophecy about him was written.  Let me illustrate how hard that would've been:

Have you ever gone to a webpage that was exceedingly long?  Like you just kept scrolling down and down and down, and it just kept going?  Imagine doing that sideways, and the length of the webpage is a little less than the size of the Old Testament.  Now imagine that this HUGE scroll had no chapters and verses as reference points. Yeah, it was hard, and at least Hebrew had spaces between words.  Ancient Greek was much harder to read.

This may seem strange, but have you ever wondered why we have punctuation marks, capital letters, or spaces between our words? If you're reading this, then you're most likely familiar with reading things based on the Latin alphabet, and haven't been exposed to writting systems that don't have capital letters or punctuation marks.  Chinese, Korean, and Japanese don't have capital letters, but they have adopted punctuation marks into their modern writing.  Ancient Greek didn't have spaces, punctuation marks, or lowercase letters.  Try reading this:

IDONOTUNDERSTANDWHATIDOFORWHATIWANTTODOIDONOTDOBUT
WHATIHATEIDOANDIFIDOWHATIDONOTWANTTODOIAGREETHATTHEL
AWISGOODASITISITISNOLONGERIMYSELFWHODOITBUTITISSINLIVING
INMEFORIKNOWTHATGOODITSELFDOESNOTDWELLINMETHATISINMY
SINFULNATUREFORIHAVETHEDESIRETODOWHATISGOODBUTICANNO
TCARRYITOUTFORIDONOTDOTHEGOODIWANTTODOBUTTHEEVILIDON
OTWANTTODOTHISIKEEPONDOINGNOWIFIDOWHATIDONOTWANTTOD
OITISNOLONGERIWHODOITBUTITISSINLIVINGINMETHATDOESIT

That was Romans 7:15-20, and the entire New Testament was written like that. 

Spaces, punctuation marks, and lowercase letters helps differentiate when there are pauses and breaks in thoughts, and help establish when new thoughts begin or end. Remember that illustration I made earlier about a really long webpage read sidways?  Now imagine doing that while reading the above text.  Kinda hard to find a passage of scripture right?

Well, the good news is that there were a couple people who knew this, and a little while after the Bible was translated into Latin (which added spaces between words), a French dude named Stephen Langton divided the Bible into chapters in 1227, and another dude named Robert Stephens went a step further and separated the Bible into verses in 1551. The modern Bible still reflects that reference system.

That's why in 1 Corinthians 6:16, Paul quotes only portion of Genesis 2:24 andleaves out the rest of verse 24. To Paul, he was quoting a portion of a book, much like how we would quote a portion from a modern novel.

A dude named Don Steward does a good job explaining the pitfalls and advantages of having this reference system, but for now, I think we've wrapped up this topic for this week.

Next Tuesday, I'll be talking about the origin of the King James Bible.  See you there. :)

Image source: http://www.torahscribe.com

Ruth Chapter 4

This last month we’ve been going through the book of Ruth, trying to highlight her heroism as well as shining a brighter light on some of the morals we can glean from such a small and often over-looked book from the Old Testament.  Today we’ll wrap up the series.

I won’t bore you with a recap of events. Instead, you can review the first, second, and third blogposts I’ve made previous about the Book of Ruth.

Chapter four begins with Boaz walking up to the city gate (in ancient times, this was like a city’s townhall), and makes arrangements with a closer relative with Naomi (he remains unnamed) who should’ve been taking care of Ruth and Naomi in the first place.  They seal the agreement, the city elders and the general public witness it, and Boaz goes on to marry Ruth.  Ruth bears a son, who will later become the grandfather to King David.  The chapter ends with a recitation of David’s lineage, from Perez to David.

Not much as far as moral stories go on in this chapter, mostly an example of customs.  First is the talk of gates, and their importance. Many psalms, for instance, talking about walking up to the city gates and proclaiming that God is the Lord (Psalm 9:14 and 100:4), and Boaz goes up to the gates of the town to get his agreement legally recognized and approved. 

Second, Boaz makes a deal with the closer relative to Naomi to marry Ruth, because the relative had the authority over Naomi’s lands and possessions.  The relative initially agrees to claiming Naomi’s land, but when he finds out that he has to marry Ruth to get it, he refuses. Most would think this was a selfish decision, but it actually is a financially sensible one: if he married Ruth, any children she had would still have the right to the land after he died.  He probably didn’t have the money to work both his and Naomi’s lands, and after maintaining it he would die and the children with his first wife wouldn’t have any claim to it after.

The only amazing thing I can find about this story is how public Boaz decides to be when he makes the arrangements to marry Ruth.  Not only did he go to the city gates, but he summoned the elders.  Not only did he summoned the elders, he gathered the people around him to witness it.  Tradition stated that only two people were needed to witness a legal matter, the fact that Boaz gathered a crowd shows how public he wanted the transaction to be: he was unashamed to be marrying a widow from a foreign land, and his commitment was total to his action.

My final thoughts on the book of Ruth is that I really appreciate the first two chapters the most, and especially like Ruth’s declaration of loyalty to Naomi  I just hope that someday, I can be that loyal too.

Will you?

Next week I’ll be talking about the construction of the Bible, and the common criticisms towards its authenticity.  See you there.

Ruth Chapter 3 (for real this time)

Last week I flubbed and said I was going to examine Ruth chapter three.  It was really chapter two.

Let’s try this dance again.

To recap: Naomi’s husband and sons have died, leaving her and her daughter-in-law, Ruth, widows.  Ruth sticks by her, and they move close to a relative who takes up responsibility of them.  Ruth works hard under the care of Boaz (the aforementioned relative).  This attracts the attention of Boaz.

The narrative: Naomi tells Ruth that she needs to step-up Ruth and Boaz’s relationship.  She tells her to get all nice and pretty and sleep at Boaz’s feet when he goes to sleep that night (this was understood to be a marriage proposal in those times).  Boaz stumbles into the barn, knocks out, and Ruth lies down at his feet.  When big brother Boaz wakes up, he sees a woman sleeping at his feet, and is a little confused (understandably). He is a bit peeved that he might be associated with drunk-sleeping around (understandly), and demands to know who it is.  Ruth identifies herself, pleads with Boaz to be more involved with her care, and Boaz agrees— but first he’s got to convince someone who is more closely related to them to marry her.  Boaz then sends her away with a large gift of grain, to help seal his promise, and the chapter ends.

Hookay, let’s break apart some of the more important parts:

First, Naomi tells Ruth to clean herself up, put on some perfume and nice clothes.  Now let’s be honest here, a guy will have a harder time saying “no” to a well-dressed, well-groomed, pretty lady.  We could say that Naomi was appealing to Boaz’s carnal nature, but people washed, perfumed, and put on their “Sunday best” when they visited God’s temple as well.  Looking and smelling nice isn’t just to engender physical appeal, but a symbolic gesture of respect— like going to a job interview (and in effect, this was what Ruth was going to do).

Second, when Boaz wakes up he’s kinda freaked out that there is some random lady sleeping at his feet.  His reaction of surprise and indignation is pretty indicative of his character: he doesn’t go around taking random women (including his servants) to bed with him, even while drunk.  Waking up with a woman at his feet could spawn a lot of bad rumors about his character, something that he’d want to avoid, and you could guess at his anger and confusion at the event.

Third, Ruth and Naomi trust that Boaz won’t take sexual advantage of Ruth while she sleeps at his feet.  He’s got the power to make her stay with him and coerce sexual favors from her if he so chooses, but he doesn’t.  They know Boaz wouldn’t do it, and I suspect that even if he did, Naomi and Ruth had no choice in the matter.

Fourth, Boaz agrees to the proposal.  Ruth puts her reputation and her body (read: physical safety), on the line when she sleeps at his feet.  Boaz knows they are in a desperate situation, and is probably deeply moved by the trust these two women have placed on him.  He has mercy on them, and probably remembers that the Israelites were foreigners long ago, and they needed help in a foreign land. He decides he should help them too.

Fifth, Naomi had a closer relative who could’ve taken care of them (as Boaz notes), but for some reason they didn’t go to that other relative.  This could be for several reasons: they knew Boaz was more righteous than the other relative, Boaz was in a better financial position to take care of them, or the other relative didn’t have that much incentive to take care of them.  Whether this was from clever planning of Naomi (which I suspect), or from God’s providence, I’m not too sure, but I’m going to trust God that he had a reason for the events to unfold the way they did.

Not much moving stuff this week (that I noticed), but good stuff nonetheless.  Next week we’ll be closing up the study of Ruth with chapter four.

See you there.