Lost in the translation - Bible Translation Questions

I've come to expect a further weakening of American Christianity and its authority to speak on most matters. I believe this thread provides a lot of proof of that. Although the general culture is mostly to blame, I think that it is a proliferation of bad translations that has done a lot of the heavy lifting in tearing down the moral authority of Christian churches. And this trend will continue and accelerate.

It's gotten difficult even to find a church that uses an acceptable Bible for worship. I can tolerate an NIV but I just want to get up and walk out if they read a paraphrase like Living Bible. I've been using my PDA with a KJV and Calvin's and Gill's commentaries and Strong's and Hebrew and Greek lexicons (among many more) just to make sure that the scripture says what is preached. That is, that's what I do when I attend. Sometimes, I seem to get a lot more out of just staying home and playing some nice hymns. Let others go gabble different Bible versions at each other, or gush excitedly over the latest and newest. It doesn't provide much spiritual meat for me. And I've noticed that all the easy-to-read more-accurate bibles actually seem to leave most people much more ignorant than they were before. I don't see that it's improved their understanding of any scripture. Maybe that's just anecdotal and, outside my area, these modern translations have turned everyone into intense bible students. But I see no evidence of it.

Ever wonder why some people have dozens of Bibles? I know people who do.

Exodus 4:21 And the LORD said unto Moses, When thou goest to return into Egypt, see that thou do all those wonders before Pharaoh, which I have put in thine hand: but I will harden his heart, that he shall not let the people go.

4:22 And thou shalt say unto Pharaoh, Thus saith the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn:

4:23 And I say unto thee, Let my son go, that he may serve me: and if thou refuse to let him go, behold, I will slay thy son, even thy firstborn.

4:24 And it came to pass by the way in the inn, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him.

4:25 Then Zipporah took a sharp stone, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet, and said, Surely a bloody husband art thou to me.

4:26 So he let him go: then she said, A bloody husband thou art, because of the circumcision.

Here is my recommendation based on a few years of experience.
If your are really interested in understanding what the New Testament says take at least two years of Greek (Koine) at the local college.
If you are really interested in the Old Testament content start to study Hebrew for at least two years at the college level. Unfortunately, we don't understand Hebrew as well as we do the Greek, so there are still some areas where the Hebrew is uncertain.
This approach effectively eliminates the dynamic translation problem. I personally recommend the New American Standard Bible (NASB) for most translations. Unfortunately, theology often overrides what the original text says.Note: After you do this you may still not understand what it said.

Interesting that this thread has drawn attention again.

In the last few years, I've enjoyed using e-Sword with the Analytical-Literal Translation and doing comparisons with KJV and other translations.

ALT is an extremely literal modern translation of the majority text. It copies the use of italics from the KJV in the most minimalist way possible. And it includes footnotes to explain many of the more obscure phrases. I like using it to supplement the KJV and to get a flavor for how Greek idioms are used. It is very revealing in certain passages.

Marlowe, as I reviewed this thread, I noticed your mention of e-Sword. I keep hoping we'll see someone produce a Mac and Linux verion of this fine resource. They also really need an update/installation option for all the add-ons which can take hours to set up properly.

I also wondered if anyone ever did Calvin's Commentaries for e-Sword. Last I checked, no one has but there are so many e-Sword project sites and mailing lists it's hard to keep up. I did some work last year on it myself and have a program in Visual Basic 6 that could do a couple NT books. Naturally, Romans was my first target and I pretty much have Romans down pat except for a few small irregularities. The main problem is that the XML version of Calvin's text isn't consistent and you end up with too many special cases to handle. (My version incorporates all the headings and indices and forewords and chapter intros and especially the hyperlinked footnotes and those awful Greek and Hebrew words in the UTF-8 format.) But it starts to fall apart when you use the same program on other NT books. It's pretty clear that CCEL uses their XML to generate their HTML versions but handle a lot of special cases in odd ways. The real problem is the apparent inconsistency in the XML between the various books. I think I need to rewrite the entire program with a language like Python/Perl/Ruby because VB6 is so weak on string handling and XML but haven't gotten around to it yet. If only CCEL would correct their XML, I could finish it in an evening.

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