Everyone here pretty much knows I am a stickler about Translations and most arguements on GT appear to stem more on oral traditions handed down as I am sure not everyone had a Bible to read during the early centuries.
But this simply
SHOCKED me, as after the Canon had been
finalized, why is it that only Jerome and the RCC had authority to TRANSLATE it? Any thoughts on this and how accurate is Jerome's translation compared to others we now have today? And please just keep this on the early Translations of the Bible for now. Thanks.
http://biblelight.net/banned.htm
............In 1408 the third synod of Oxford, England, banned unauthorized English translations of the Bible and decreed that possession of English translation's had to be approved by diocesan authorities. The Oxford council declared:
"It is dangerous, as
St. Jerome declares,
to translate the text of Holy Scriptures out of one idiom into another, since it is not easy in translations to preserve exactly the same meaning in all things.
We therefore command and ordain that henceforth
no one translate the text of Holy Scripture into English or any other language as a book, booklet, or tract, of this kind lately made in the time of the said John Wyclif or since, or that hereafter may be made, either in part or wholly, either publicly or privately,
under pain of excommunication, until such translation shall have been approved and allowed by the Provincial Council. He who shall act otherwise let him be
punished as an abettor of heresy and error."...................
http://www.godandscience.org/apologetics/localflood.html
...........When you read an English translation of the biblical account of the flood, you will undoubtedly notice many words and verses that seem to suggest that the waters covered all of planet earth.
3 However, one should note that today we look at everything from a global perspective, whereas the Bible nearly always refers to local geography. You may not be able to determine this fact from our
English translations, so we will look at the
original Hebrew, which is the word of God................
Well, I don't know where you get the finalization of the canon, at least not if you accept the current canon of the Roman Catholic Church. For the Roman Catholic Church itself taught for hundreds of years that the books the Protestants call Apocrypha was not scripture in the sense of being authoritative for doctrine. It was however used as a ecclesiatical canon, that is to be read in the church.
That continued with the mainline Protestants, such as Lutherans, Anglicans, and even the Reformed, though the Reformed tended to drop it pretty quickly. Most Protestant Bibles continued to contain the Apocrypha up until the 1800's, though the Puritans and Baptists objected and produced Bibles without them.
How accurate is Jerome's translation?
Well pretty good. It suffers from a couple of things. One is that Jerome did not have a critical text to work from, he had earlier sources and he clearly studied more than one so his translation in a sense represents a critical text but the source texts are really an unknown. The Old Testament is probably pretty good and shows it's agreement with today's Massoretic text.
The Psalter came from the Septuagint so if you study the Vulgate and the Modern Translations in the Old Testament, that's where you will tend to find more differences.
Jerome on the Apocryphal books (his term) either did a quick translation or simply took and Old Latin preexisting translation.
The New Testament is largely a correction of Old Latin and not a completely new translation, hard to know exactly how Jerome went about it.
It is impossible to perfectly translate all the verbs in Greek into Latin, so even though close languages, like all translations a perfect one is impossible. Of course Latin is much more distant to Hebrew and so a translation is even more difficult.
Jerome was good, but not perfect. That is easily demonstrable with one verb, monogenes in the Greek. Jerome translated it unigenitum, which is incorrect, it should have been unicum. Jerome in this is a reflection of his day.
You can see it in the Creeds. In the Apostle's Creed, the Greek monogenes is given in the Latin as the correct, unicum. Which would translate into English as unique. By the time of the Nicene Creed we see the same word, monogenes, in the Greek, but the Latin changes to unigenitum.
That carries through to this day to a certain extent. For instance in the much beloved John 3:16 where people still tend to use the translation of the Latin unigenitum which is "only begotten", instead of the correct one, "unique". Many translations have tried to use "only" and many English speakers are used now to an Apostle's Creed that uses "only" for monogenes or unicum. But that's really not correct.
The mistake is easily demonstrated with one verse.
Heb 11:17 Vulgate
(17) fide obtulit Abraham Isaac cum temptaretur et unigenitum offerebat qui susceperat repromissiones
Heb 11:17 kjv
(17) By faith Abraham, when he was tried, offered up Isaac: and he that had received the promises offered up his only begotten son,
The problem of course is that Isaac was not Abraham's only begotten son, he was however unique, the sole, one of a kind, child of the promise of God.
So there goes the perfection of Jerome.
The perfection of Jerome and the Vulgate really seems to go back to a belief very much like the King James Only people of today. Many literally taught the Vulgate was superior to the originals, effectively teaching double inspiration.
That of course was almost a Tradition by then, for the people who believed the Septuagint was inspired criticized Jerome, particularly that he did not follow the text of the Septuagint.
You see remnants of that one today yet too. Like for instance the myth that the books of the Septuagint were the same since before the time of Jesus so since there are quotes in the New Testament from the Septuagint that should set our canon.
No evidence of that of course. Take the oldest copies of the Septuagint that we have, they come from several hundred years later. But pay attention to the books they contain. There are books from the modern Septuagint missing in some, there are books not in the modern Septuagint contained in some. Strange indeed for something that was supposedly set several hundred years earlier.
Marv
