tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post114558455130333512..comments2024-01-03T07:56:32.311-05:00Comments on quaker oats live: bible translationAnonymoushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07488876505679035140noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post-1146096398059712782006-04-26T20:06:00.000-04:002006-04-26T20:06:00.000-04:00Just to correct one thing I said, in the question ...Just to correct one thing I said, in the question of whether it is faith in Jesus or of Jesus I said that the word for "faith" was in the genitive form. It is, but it has no bearing on the "in vs. of" discussion. It is that name Jesus is in the genitive that makes "of Jesus" a possible interpretation.Mark Wutkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01735952904584567390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post-1146091168258584512006-04-26T18:39:00.000-04:002006-04-26T18:39:00.000-04:00There was some discussion about this on the b-gree...There was some discussion about this on the b-greek list last year, and I am basically parroting that info here, I am still learning it myself. For people that don't know Greek, there is really no "in" or "of" word in the text, but the word "faith" is in the genitive form. The Greek does support translating it as either "faith of" or "faith in", it is a matter for the translator to determine what the author most likely meant.<BR/><BR/>I used to think that the more literal a translation was, the better it was, or the more accurate it was. Since I have been reading http://englishbibles.blogspot.com/, however, I have begun to understand some of the downsides of a more literal translation. For example, if you are translating something from German and read that something "has neither hand nor foot", do you say exactly that, or do you relay the underlying meaning that "it makes no sense"? <BR/><BR/>There is more to reading a text than just understanding the vocabulary and syntax. I'm not sure I completely agree with Anonymous' assertion that someone who reads 300 translations of the old testament is below someone who learns hebrew to read the tanakh. If you want to really understand what that text meant to the original readers, you also need to learn the cultural background, and all the euphemisms and idioms. A couple of different English translations coupled with some commentaries might give you a better understanding than just learning Hebrew and/or Greek alone. I'm not arguing against learning those languages, I'm just saying that knowing Greek or Hebrew doesn't guarantee you have a better understanding.Mark Wutkahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01735952904584567390noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post-1145932044688743302006-04-24T22:27:00.000-04:002006-04-24T22:27:00.000-04:00Semantics are confounding. A lot of the time I fee...Semantics are confounding. A lot of the time I feel sad about the cultural historical background to it so that it couldn't have been ancient Chinese the language in which it all developed, that would have shown how void is to see beyond the concept of what it is said and it would also spare us all the unnecessary translations which are many past the two line: original, most accurate edition of original, otherwise it's void theology we are given and not real content but deconstruction(i.e. "analysis") reading the original translation and most literal translation of the tao te ching shows the greater quality of abstraction, to include more than one's thoughts in reading what according to itself should be an account of events and revelations is erratic, like having someone read for you and have this person stopping every so often to tell you what thoughts he has about the text, what metaphores are brought to mind and what he or she personally thinks it actually means. The colour green is greener as seen than as shared in agreeing that the word for it is green, only one can perceive colors and they don't rely on agreement or group uniformity, that's why the blind can't say green without lying, it's the same with the bible. <BR/>A person who reads 300 translations of the old testament is very bellow in thinking to someone who learns hebrew to read the tanakh in the closest to original form.Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post-1145737959863640632006-04-22T16:32:00.000-04:002006-04-22T16:32:00.000-04:00I think that's a great way of going about it, Paul...I think that's a great way of going about it, Paul. It also works pretty well to use an amplified version, which uses several words to translate ones that don't come across in English with only one word.<BR/><BR/>With a very basic knowledge of Greek I think it's even helpful to use an interlinear (Greek with word-for-word English right below it), because then you can see what it's saying more literally. Then if there's a word you want to know more about you could look it up in a Greek dictionary.<BR/><BR/>The problem with any translation is that it's really hard to get a full sense of what's going on from one language into another language. It's even harder because we're almost 2000 years distant from when these works were written, and we have the same amount of years of other people's translations telling us what they think it means. The long history of translations is good in some ways--we can look at the earlier ones and get more of a feel for what the original meant. But it's also difficult in that there is a tendency to translate based on one's theology, so subsequent translations and theologies end up being based on the earlier ones whether they agree (or even know there's a theological bias there) or not. <BR/><BR/>So no translation is perfect, we all have our biases, but it's good to look at several translations so you can at least understand what it might be that is being changed based on a certain group's theological bent.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07488876505679035140noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-19785125.post-1145714387843090742006-04-22T09:59:00.000-04:002006-04-22T09:59:00.000-04:00I probably won't ever take the high road Greek cl...I probably won't ever take the high road Greek classes, even though I did take a Greek-English intro. class years back, very basic, so what I do with confusing passages is pull out a lot of different translations and do some comparing. I usually find a sense of the passage that brings clarity for me. What do you think of this approach? Strengths? Weaknesses?Paulhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09429320213684430282noreply@blogger.com