But there's still a problem even if you learn Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic.
And that problem is obvious to anyone who speaks a second modern language. No matter how good you are (and it's tough to get really good at any language that you don't hear spoken and see broadcast) a second language speaker just can never quite get inside the idiom. Idiom has to be explained, often idiom for idiom.
This is even true in our own native language.
Charles II said this of St. Paul's: "It is amusing. It is artificial. It is awful." So, did he like it, or didn't he?
Another example: "I doubt he's drowned."
Pure and simple English.
In 2006, it means "I really don't think he drowned."
In 1786, it means "I'm pretty sure he drowned."
George Washington wrote about having so many naked men at Valley Forge. My God, those poor men! Naked in the snow for months. They must have really suffered! Actually, they must all have DIED for certain, in about a DAY (never mind months) if they were really NAKED in the snow. Washington meant that they didn't have guns. If nobody told you that today, you would have no idea that's what naked meant, in the military jargon (but not the standard speech) of 1776.
The Second Amendment to the US Constitution (1789) refers to "A well regulated militia". Now, this one is really a political hot-potato. What does that MEAN? Does it mean a national guard under orders? Does it mean well armed men?
People will fight long and hard, because in 1787 it could have meant EITHER thing; today, well-regulated CAN'T mean simply "well-equipped", but "well-regulated" meant both things back then. This is particularly instructive because, like the Bible, the Second Amendment to the Constitution matters and is hotly disputed. There is, in fact, no way to tease out the ACTUAL meaning of the Second Amendment in 1787 speak, because it is worded ambiguously. And if you don't know the idiom of 1787, you have no idea of the ambiguity in the drafting. "Well-regulated" does not mean "well-equipped" to any native speaker of English in 2006. Somebody had to teach you that idiom, in your own native language. And how do you know HE'S not trying to manipulate you for political reasons on something as important as the Second Amendment?
So, go and learn Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew, and you're still going to be reading a translation. Be a native speaker of Hebrew and you're still reading the Hebrew Bible itself effectively in translation.
Go pick up either Chaucer or Shakespeare and read either WITHOUT footnotes or end-notes or a dictionary. No native speaker of the language can understand many passages without special training, and how do we even know that the special training is right? We can't consult Shakespeare to be sure of the idiom. We can only guess at it. And we speak English!
Another example. Hamlet says savagely to Ophelia: "Get thee to a nunnery!" Now, on the surface, this seems to be telling her to leave him alone, leave off loving him, and go join a convent. Of course, those with special education and knowledge will come in (usually pridefully and condescendingly) and demonstrate their superior knowledge by telling you "No, no, no. A nunnery was a WHOREHOUSE in the slang of the time. So Hamlet was telling Ophelia to get herself into a whorehouse!" This makes the story much more titillating. And when I read Hamlet in high school, and then again in college, both times both teachers did not fail to wisely instruct us of that fact, that THAT'S what Shakespeare REALLY meant.
But they're actually quite wrong.
Because in Shakespeare's day, "nunnery" was slang for whorehouse, but it was also standard English for...a convent. Which means that MAYBE Shakespeare was having Hamlet tell Ophelia to get to a whorehouse. Or MAYBE Shakespeare was making a pun. Or MAYBE Shakespeare didn't intend to use a pun at all, but was having Hamlet tell Ophelia to forget about love with him and turn to God and become a nun, renouncing sex forever because she couldn't have him. That later, straight, non-punning read would actually make Hamlet a more arrogant character in a different way than the way it is taught.
Which is RIGHT?
Ask Shakespeare when you die and go to heaven.
My point is demonstrated. Even in our own native tongue, once the language gets to be a couple of hundred years old, maybe less than that, the idioms and internal references become as foreign as any foreign tongue. And there is nothing one can do to understand them but rely on the best guesses of other scholars.
Now, anybody learning ancient Greek and ancient Hebrew is learning a very ancient idiom of languages that no longer exist. There are no native speakers of the ancient forms of either. Even modern Hebrew speakers, raised speaking Israeli Hebrew from birth, are doing a simultaneous translation when they read ANCIENT Hebrew, which is not the language they speak, just like WE do a simultaneous translation whenever WE attempt to read Chaucer.
What's more, even if you learn these languages, you will be learning from modern teachers and effectively doing a simultaneous translation. And the precision with which a student of ancient language focuses may very well result in seeing patterns and ideas that WOULD BE puns (like the nunnery business) but which the original writers never thought of or intended. We tend to see puns in other language that aren't really there.
Example: those of us who are French and English speakers see a near-pun in the name of the French car make "Citroen". Citroen in French is close to the word "citron", which means "lemon", in French. And so a bilingual anglo-francophone is likely to think it amusing that a French car maker is (almost) called "Lemon". Talk about bad branding! Of course, "lemon" has no meaning in French other than the fruit. Say "Ma bagnole est un citron" - my car is a lemon - and the French will just look wuizzical. Did he mispronounce "Citroen"? Does he have a yellow car? Sort of like "My car is an avocado", in English. Huh? (A French or Spanish speaker might try to figure out some sort of pun about your car as a lawyer, but you wouldn't get it unless you spoke French or Spanish, and it wouldn't be a very good pun even if you did get it).
I think I have made my point. Learn the ancient languages, that is a good exercise. You can learn some interesting things. But your teachers aren't native speakers either, so the best you're going to get is guesswork. And natural idioms and meanings will be lost on you even if you read those language correctly.
So, is there any way at all to capture more of the ancient meaning?
I think there is. But, perhaps paradoxically, it comes from a particular ancient translation.
One of the real usefulnesses of the Rosetta Stone was that it didn't just let us break ancient scripts, but it gave us a glimpse of some idiomatic use between languages. Rosetta is particularly useful because it was written down at a time and in a culture when there were native speakers and users of at least two of the languages (and maybe all three), which means that the idiom in all three languages was current. Being able to see the ANCIENTS translate between their own languages when those languages were still living is advantageous to spotting idioms that would be missed even by a PhD of the modern languages.
There is an ancient version of the Bible which does act as a sort of Rosetta Stone for us. When St. Jerome translated the Vulgate Bible, from the Greek and Hebrew into Latin, he was doing so as a native Latin-speaking (and nearly native-Greek speaking) scholar living in the empire that was described in the New Testament, with those social norms. Both Latin and Ancient Greek were very much alive. Biblical Hebrew was not a spoken tongue except for religious purposes (much as Latin was in the Middle Ages), but the Middle East still spoke Aramaic.
So, with Jerome's Vulgate text, which get an ancient bilingual man, who was also very fluent in the ancient view of Hebrew, translating idiomatically, in culture, between two native or nearly native tongues.
Why is that so good?
Because when WE make our translations, there are choices to be made, and sometimes it's difficult to know which to make.
That was true when Jerome made his translation too. But when he made it, he was in culture and an actual user of, and resident of, a Latin and Koine Greek world. Jerome had to make the same choices, when translating into Latin from Greek (or Hebrew) as any other translator. But HIS choices are superior to any modern translator, precisely because HE, unlike anybody today, was a living native speaker (or nearly) of both languages in culture. So when HE made HIS choices, he does so with an authority that nobody working one thousand six hundred years later with three dead languages can every possibly come close to attaining.
Jerome faced the choices all translators face, but his translation has a double authority, because he was aiming at meaning, and among all of the possibilities, he chose the one that actually represented the idiom of two native tongues. We can't do that.
And that is why Jerome's Vulgate is a PARTICULARLY good text to translate. He already made a translation from Greek, and made choices, just like a modern translating from Greek. But his Latin is certainly a more accurate translation of what the Greek idiom MEANT, in the ancient world, than anybody can do today in English.
Any world class translator worth his salt translating from the Greek textus receptus into English will have Jerome's Latin Vulgate lying open, and when there are tough choices to be made with no clear way, will look at how Jerome handled it, and realize that Jerome spoke Latin and Ancient Greek with native fluency and lived in the Roman Empire in the very cultures described. So when HE made a choice, he knew what he was doing, and he's more authoritative than any modern could be.
"A translation is but an echo", said Ovid.
Nobody can read the Bible at all except in translation, and that is true even if one takes the time to learn ancient Hebrew and ancient Greek and finds the best original texts. You're STILL not a native speaker. You're STILL doing the simultaneous translation, and translating words into their modern meanings. You can try to learn as much as possible about ancient idioms, but you're certain to miss much of what's there, maybe even more than if you read in translation.
This, incidentally, is a key problem with the Douai-Rheims or "King James" Version: the idiom and dialect is old; we are often confused or deceived as to understanding ("It's amusing. It's artificial. It's awful." "Many of my soldiers are naked." "A well-regulated militia...") KJV and Douai-Rheims English is older than any of that. To read the KJV or Douai-Rheims, you have to make a simultaneous translation in your head.
What all of this tells ME is that if the Bible is the "Inspired Word of God", excessive and minute word-for-word literalism can't be achieved, because it's beyond our ken. By it, God must be trying to teach us more general principles and ideas, because the real minutiae doesn't survive the generations even in the SAME language, let alone across thousands of years and translations.
True story: we were in a restaurant, and the menu was rather snootily printed in French (in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1960s, this was CLEARLY "bunging on side" for no good reason.) One of the appetizers was "avocat". My dad inquires of the waiter, "You serve lawyers here?" Waiter didn't miss a beat. "Ah, no, m'sieur - they are too tough. . . " We howled (and left him a good tip.)
That's basically the same I told 'em about the problems of translation. My conclusion, though, was that you get hold of as many translations and as many different commentaries as you can . . . then decide!
Even with a colloquial translation, the real significance in studying Scripture, is to first return to Him in fellowship and by faith and allow Him to train your spirit through the proper placement of your soul in faith with Him.
The Word is His communication to our soul for the edification of our thinking processes so we allow the Holy Spirit to further sanctify our spirit. This is imperative so that we do not grieve nor quench the Spirit.
Those who only seek a legalistic interpretation may fall victim of becoming soulish in their thinking independent of God, and quenching the Spirit.
IMHO, it is very literal. One merely need to also recognize that when the Scripture doesn't further qualify an issue, it might be for a very literal intent as to the lack of further qualification. I've found this to be an outstanding mechanism to communicate the residence of faith in our thinking through Him while studying Scripture. Such notions are awkward to express or communicate by other methods, and coincidentally provide for the active agency of the Holy Spirit during our studies of Scripture.
Well written post, with some very valid points. However, I'm not sure idioms render certain ancient literature as inaccessible and cloudy of meaning as you are saying.
Idioms throughout history are primarily a part of informal, and usually spoken language, even when later written down. Much of the bible is not informal (though some surely is) and much of it is not quotations (as all the examples you gave really are). Just as today when we record history, colloquial idiomatic language is not often used...so too the ancients weren't stupid--in recording word plays and obscurities that in just a few generations are unintelligable. The main important points are still there. Of course some of that must be there in scripture....but as the most (by far) studied books in history, the difficulities found (and differences in translations) are not very numerous in the big picture. I'm sure no man alive native Hebrew speaker or not, gets all the nuances of the poetic Psalms as they were written....however we do get (even in translation) a lot....and meaning is not rendered null.
One interesting famous changes of meaning from the Vulgate verses the original Greek discovered in reformation times is the text of Matt. 3:2. The Vulgate reads (in common translation at the time) "Do pennance for the kingdom of Heaven is at hand." This was apparently understood (and taught to the masses) as a command to do the formal Roman Catholic rite of pennance (which of course infamously involved indulgences...Luther's bane). All modern translations (looking to the Greek, not the 1000+ year old tranlation of the Greek) render the verse: "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand." This gives an entirely different though related take on the issue.
Of course to us today, its obvious the First Century Jewish hearers of that call knew nothing of the eventual rite of Pennance, but the medieval largely illiterate masses simply couldn't discern that--and the bible was definitely tightly controlled by the Church. Accurate translation DOES make a difference...and none are perfect, but at the same time I'm confident (due to the protection of His word by the Holy Spirit) essential meaning eventually is conveyed, even if some nuances and idioms are lost.
The variety of authors and books found in scripture...written over a long period of time also helps to avoid deep and mysterious idiomatic writing....
Thank you so much for a well reasoned response.
Now I have to go drive to work in my spirit filled (Pneuma) tires.