Worldly word:New Bible texts translate the Bible away

WORLD ^ | October 15, 2005 | Gene Edward Veith

[NoCmpromiz]

Also see:

New Testament translation: Thou shalt have sex

[radioman]

If you are arguing that the Catholic Church was not really "catholic" (because there were many sects,

Many sects proves there were no Catholics. This has been fun, but it's time to point out the obvious. There were many Christian creeds. Nicaea gave one catholic creed for all. The word catholic means universal.
.

[Vicomte13]

"Many sects proves there were no Catholics."

No it doesn't.
There are many sects today...about 6000 and growing.
That hardly means that there are no Catholics.
About 85% of Christians are Catholics, and another 5-6% are Orthodox who are all but Catholic. That still leaves 8-10% of Christianity to the other 5998 sects.
You can have Catholics and plenty of other Christian sects, some of them quite vibrant and growing, like the Mormons.

There's no particular reason to think that the same was not the case in 150 AD either.

Obviously all of the major Protestant sects today are the descendants of the Catholic church of Nicaea. Certainly Luther and his progeny, and the Church of England and her progeny, are quite Nicene Catholic in their creeds and beliefs. There are only a handful of Christian sects that philosphically resemble those early multiplicity of sects, and none in the Western world that actually descend from any of them.

[JenB]

It sounds like 4kids got a hold of the bible.

Good grief, you're right. Renaming characters, mistranslating - they probably cut out the whole "Resurrection Arc", too.

[Dan from Michigan]

But that does not go far enough. The liberal Catholic group Priests for Equality published in 2004 the Inclusive Bible. "Kingdom" is both sexist and authoritarian, so the priests made up a new word, "kindom." Adam is not a "man," he is an "earth creature." And to avoid offending homosexuals or others in nontraditional relationships, the words "husband" and "wife" are changed to "partner."

What the hell kind of "Catholics" are they?

[radioman]

There are many sects today...about 6000 and growing
I followed your lead when I used the word "sect." I should have said "creed"...My mistake.

About 85% of Christians are Catholics

Then we can assume that the King James Bible is the creed of the majority of Christians.
That being the case, all of those who are of the King James creed are catholics...Followers of the universal creed.
Catholics then, would be divided into sects. Roman, Lutheran, Baptist, etc.
Since there is now only one universal creed, King James, all Christians are catholics. Anyone following another creed is a heretic.

Before Nicaea there were many creeds. That's what Nicaea was all about. They decided on one catholic creed. There were no catholics before Nicaea because there was no universal creed before Nicaea.
.

[Verginius Rufus]

The latest figures in The World Almanac are:

2,069,883,000 Christians, of which

1,092,853,000 are Catholics,
364,530,000 are Protestants,
217,030,000 are Orthodox,
79,988,000 are Anglican, and
406,074,000 are "independents" (whatever that means).

The totals don't add up (and Anglicans are generally considered Protestants), but at any rate Catholics appear to be just slightly over one-half of the total, with Orthodox a little over 10%.

[Vicomte13]

Interesting.

I got my numbers off of some religious data website (can't remember which).

Interesting that there would be such a tremendous variance.
What that tells me is that nobody knows, and that these numbers are a guess.

I suppose an "independent" is someone who says he's a Christian but says he doesn't belong to or believe in any particular sect. I wonder if they include Mormons and Christian Scientists as Protestants?

[Verginius Rufus]

They don't explain who is included as "independent" but cite the 2004 Encyclopaedia Britannica Book of the Year as the source of their figures. Besides Mormons and Christian Scientists there are other groups like the Jehovah's Witnesses which may be kept out of the "Protestant" category. There are some Eastern churches which have theological differences with the Orthodox Church, such as the Coptic Church, but I'm guessing they are counting the Copts in the Orthodox category (they have almost 37 million Orthodox in Africa, which would roughly approximate the total of Ethiopian Christians plus Egyptian Copts).

[attiladhun2]

Dear Vic: What you are saying is true. However, you still have to translate any text as faithfully and as free from one's own personal, ideological, or theological biases as possible. That task is done by making proper use of lexicons and ancient sources. A "translation" that overtly reflects these biases is not a translation, but a periphrastic work of propaganda.