Bible versions

[MarkRohfrietsch]

The one place I did not look, and the most obvious, lol. Thank you. I can appreciate what they chose to include and to omit.



Now that surprises me somewhat. I don't know as I've heard that position actually articulated by any other group. Interesting ...

I'm actually a little surprised as I have generally seen Lutheran theology to be extremely careful to the point it seems to me that the position would be if a question came up that could involve possible error, the decision would be made to err on the side of caution, if necessary. No criticism intended. I'm just surprised.

We tend to be pragmatic.

 

[Taom Ben Robert]

And as a reminder ....

This thread is in Traditional Theology.

Luther's (and others of the time of the Reformers) are included within this, but SO ARE the original 15 centuries of the witness of the Church that preceded them. The early councils of the Church considered the Septuagint as Scripture. (And this was THE Church before there was a separation into "Roman Catholic" etc.)

IIRC, the OT of the KJV is based on the Masoretic Text, is it not? While it bears much similarity to older texts, there are also significant differences? And it was not codified until quite a few centuries after Christ?

While I love my Lutheran brothers and sisters, and mean no disrespect, the very fact that he wished to removed James, especially, as well as Hebrews, Jude, and Revelation is of great concern to me. He also tried to get Esther placed with the "Apocrypha", I believe? And the KJV was originally put together for the Church of England. I would rather not get into the political and personal reasons the King of England wished to establish his own Church apart from the Catholics, but that would have been the impetus for the KJV, I believe. Again, no disrespect intended for my Anglican brothers and sisters. (None of us share either blame or credit for anything done by Church leaders in past centuries, and I do respect you all very much.)

(And for what it's worth, I have done almost all of my Scripture memorization in King James, and our Church often uses the NKJV - I use various translations for various purposes - I am not an "only"est of any kind.)

By the way, the Orthodox Church does not consider all of Scripture to be on equal footing either. There are several levels of authority and importance. The Gospels are primary of course - when everything is viewed through the lens of the Gospel, through the revelation of Jesus Christ the God-man as revealed to us, everything falls into place. Trying to understand the faith through the lens of the Psalms or some of the history, for example, can have terrible results (depending upon which passage is chosen - making people believe that God is very bloodthirsty and would smash infants on a rock). The epistles hold a very important place as well, and so on, through various levels of understanding. (The Psalms are also important and a number of them are read in Church every time we gather.) Context and knowing the purposes of the Scriptures are very important.

To be fair , he didn't actually try to remove those four NT books , he merely called them Antilegomena ( questioned) merely recognizing that they are canonical but we're disputed by some of the fathers , and although he initially had a low view of Esther ( changing that view later on ) he never attempted to remove it , anyway , it's interesting the variation between canons ( someone should try reading the Ethiopian one in a church sometime I can just imagine people's reactions )
Keep the faith my sister

 

[~Anastasia~]

To be fair , he didn't actually try to remove those four NT books , he merely called them Antilegomena ( questioned) merely recognizing that they are canonical but we're disputed by some of the fathers , and although he initially had a low view of Esther ( changing that view later on ) he never attempted to remove it , anyway , it's interesting the variation between canons ( someone should try reading the Ethiopian one in a church sometime I can just imagine people's reactions )
Keep the faith my sister

Fair enough then. My understanding of Martin Luther's opinions and actions and words don't go that much beyond what is widely available on sources like Wikipedia. I hope I gave no offense, and if I did, please forgive me.

LOL and I purposely avoid mentioning the Ethiopian canon.

It does illustrate a good principle though. The Ethiopians are the only ones that have certain things in their canon - and they handle them with reasonableness. They have the traditional framework to do so. But yes, hand them over to everyone in general, and all kinds of strange things come out of it.

God be with you, my brother.

 

[Taom Ben Robert]

None taken, Ana

 

[ViaCrucis]

The NIV is a pretty serviceable translation, if as you say, one is evangelical, and the original is better than the newer inclusive-language version. But it's not good for us of Traditional Theology--as you say the Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition is as good as you can get. The recent Roman Catholic versions are basically reverent, but too defaced with pompous Higher Criticism. True, much of the latter is warranted, but does not belong in Bibles for the ordinary laypersons to read without damage to their faith. The New American Bible is the most threatening in this way, even though its the RC pulpit Bible. I like the New Jerusalem Bible the best for me, but know it's not the best for the ordinary Catholic nor the non-Catholic. The NRSV is ruined by the inclusive language, the NASB and the Holman are too staidly Protestant, which as I said leaves me in agreement with you that the RSVCE is best for everyone (also similarly available as The Common Bible), though Protestants may prefer simply the Second Edition (1971) without the Apocrypha.
"This second edition of the RSV doesn't put the biblical text through a filter to make it acceptable to current tastes and prejudices, and it retains the beauty of the RSV language that has made it such a joy to read and reflect on the Word of God. Now the only Catholic Bible in standard English is even more beautiful in word and design!" (online promo for the Ignatius Bible)
Strange how with so many new translations they're all already outdated (as the RSV was by 1971 with some archaic language) or too "hip" to be serviceable. I can't recommend any other version than the 2nd Edition of the RSV.
And for my purposes as a scholar, I don't know of any that's woodenly "good", with every word in the original language translated with the same English word and in the same word order as the original. Supposedly the Young's Literal and the Concordant do the job, but the latter is not critical enough and the former is based on the Textus Receptus (that underlies the KJV).

I think referring to "inclusive language" in translations of Scripture is perhaps a too broad a term. When inclusive language is used that is intended to better represent the meaning of the text, I don't think that's a bad thing; for example where one might translate adelphoi as "brothers and sisters" when the text is being addressed to the entire community of the Faithful. It would be wrong of us to assume that it was only for the men when women are often either explicitly or implicitly included in the scope of the text.

I've also known a few who take issue with non-gender specific pronouns, and yet these are used where in the Greek text the pronouns are gender neutral.

Now, I'll certainly agree that inclusive language that doesn't reflect the text is problematic--based solely on the fact that a translation really should be aiming to be faithful to the intent of the text to the best of the translator's abilities.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[ViaCrucis]

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Bible/king_james-proofs.htm

https://www.jesus-is-lord.com/apocryph.htm

https://www.christiancourier.com/articles/111-apocrypha-inspired-of-god-the

Your use of jesus-is-lord.com is problematic because the website is notoriously wrong, promoting misinformation, ignorance, and lies.

You would benefit greatly from going to credible sources to get your information.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[GoingByzantine]

I would be interested in learning Koine Greek so that I could (at least partially) bypass the confusing plethora of English translations that are currently on the market.

 

[GreekOrthodox]

Byz, My own recommendation is Mounce Biblical Greek. It teaches you the most common words first so you can have a working vocabulary and then gets into the more complex declensions and verb tenses.

 

[GoingByzantine]

Byz, My own recommendation is Mounce Biblical Greek. It teaches you the most common words first so you can have a working vocabulary and then gets into the more complex declensions and verb tenses.

Interesting, I have not heard of Mounce Biblical Greek before. Is this an electronic software?

 

[~Anastasia~]

Interesting, I have not heard of Mounce Biblical Greek before. Is this an electronic software?

I have a textbook and workbook, which I am ashamed to admit I started but put down after just a couple of pages because I was not quite sure of pronunciation. There is also a Mounce Interlinear online that I usually search for and work from.

(There may be software too, for all I know - I picked these up really cheap iirc on Amazon)

That's something I've been telling myself I'm going to work more diligently on. Hearing Greek in the Liturgy and looking up the occasional word has been good for me. I heard a new (to me) hymn the other day and could understand all the "main words" (all of the nouns and a few verbs - plus a little more). And sometimes I've been able to identify what passage was being read when they read the Epistle in Greek before reading it in English. (I am far too pleased by this, lol, but it IS something I really want to be able to do too!)

It really doesn't help much with conversations. It's rare that I can identify the topic, because there isn't much overlap. Only if the topic is spiritual matters. Other than that I've mostly picked up food and basic pleasantries as far as conversation goes.

 

[Shane R]

I'm doing the first unit of Greek this semester. This is the text:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament...reek Hewett&qid=1464332626&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

 

[Unix]

I would recommend either Accordance, they have enhanced this resource, see: http://www.accordancebible.com/forums/topic/18677-mounce-basics-of-biblical-greek/#entry90890
...or for an even easier, not as advanced interface WORDsearch which doesn't have particular resource (yet), but has a sale on: https://www.wordsearchbible.com/products/27908 ... $300 or an additional 10% off through a sales rep, I mentioned this in: http://www.christianforums.com/thre...-picking-the-right-bible-translation.7948583/ :

Interesting, I have not heard of Mounce Biblical Greek before. Is this an electronic software?

 

[GoingByzantine]

I'm doing the first unit of Greek this semester. This is the text:
http://www.amazon.com/New-Testament...reek Hewett&qid=1464332626&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

Have you found this text helpful?

 

[ViaCrucis]

While I've still yet to learn [Koine] Greek, I consider one of my few personal accomplishments in life in that I memorized the Greek alphabet while still in high school. It wasn't taught, it was just pure personal nerdy passion. But it has made poring over Greek texts when looking for a particular word, or making sense of the very short vocabulary I do have a less stressful endeavor. So that even if I'm probably pronouncing something wrong, I'm still able to at least kind of haphazardly sound out what I'm looking at. Next step would be to actually learn Greek for real, which I would love to do.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[Shane R]

Have you found this text helpful?

Yes. the instructor selected it because it is quite focused on teaching the reading of Koine Greek. That is to say, it does not treat Greek like a living language, where one would want to learn to speak more than anything. The little CD has some helpful study tools. He also suggested this website for the purpose of drill practice: http://www.ntgreek.net/

 

[Radagast]

Next step would be to actually learn Greek for real, which I would love to do.

The grammar is a pain, but you already know much of the vocab; perhaps you just don't know that you know it. For example:

Ophthalmos = eye

Stoma = mouth

Thēsauros = treasure-box

Thugatēr = daughter

 

[~Anastasia~]

The grammar is a pain, but you already know much of the vocab; perhaps you just don't know that you know it. For example:

Ophthalmos = eye

Stoma = mouth

Thēsauros = treasure-box

Thugatēr = daughter

Absolutely. That is really what I too need to be diligent on. We do know a great deal of vocabulary, without realizing it. Add to that some years of looking up words in the Scriptures, and for a little over two years now I've worked through the words of the hymns - sometimes now I can hear a new passage and understand enough of the words that I know what in general is being talked about and how it is being described - but have zero understanding of verb tense and other such details.

Today "summer vacation" (ie no work) officially began for me. It's time to get busy with such things, I suppose. I hope I will make some progress on those details now.

 

[Korah]

I have just discovered the best list I know of of English translations of the Bible. 74 are listed, and they don't include any before the Douay-Rheims except the Wycliffe Bible, nor any after 2005. Too long to list more than just their abbreviations, I think:
AAT ABT ATB ASL ASV AB AV=KJV BWE CCB CE CJB CV CEV Dar DR ENT ERV ESV GLW GW GNB HCSB ICB ISB ISV JBP JNT DKJB KJII KJ21 KJ2000 LITV LB MAEV MKJV MLB MLV NAB NASB NCV NEB NET NIV NJB NKJV NLV NLT NRSV NWT OBP ONT OSB PMB RAV REB RKJV RSV RV Sch SEB TM TMB TEV TNIV Tyn UKJV WB WNT Wey WEB WE Wyc YLT (Moffatt New Translation MNT needs to be added)
Essential Bible pp 281-282, a Roman Catholic publication that fails to mention the one RC version most recommended, the RSV2CE

 

[ViaCrucis]

Something I was thinking about is what my ideal Bible would be, and that probably could be its own thread topic in and of itself. At first I was thinking an Old Testament (with Deuterocanonicals) consisting both of the Hebrew Masoretic Text and the Septuagint; but perhaps even better would be something closer to the ancient Hexapla. As far as New Testament goes, some sort of interlinear would be great, though I'd love to be able to see many of the variant readings and their translations as well. All of that would also have extensive study notes with explanations for variant readings and the like.

An extensively information rich study Bible, I suppose, would be my ideal.

But for casual reading I do always seem to go back between the NRSV and ESV and find them both very good. But for study I like to have as much information as possible at my fingertips, because I really enjoy the textual analysis of Scripture.

-CryptoLutheran

 

[hedrick]

My ideal would be NRSV with less ham-handed gender-neutral wording.