Re: translations
AntiUtopia@aol.com
Sat, 31 Jan 1998 15:03:50 -0500 (EST)
eh, speaking as someone who has studied a bit of theology and looked at the
textual issues surrounding the Christian Scriptures, you've represented just
one viable position among many in your post below. The people who have
adopted that position flatter themselves with the title "The Only Really
Objective Bible Scholars," but I've sat thru their classes and know better
than to believe that...
;)
Jim
In a message dated 1/31/98 0:55:50 AM EST, suburbantourist@hotmail.com writes:
<< Not only over and over, but through many different channels. And it was
also censored, before and after every translation. And besides that,
all books of the bible were conscientiously chosen for the end result.
And the authors themselves are not necessarily credible. The book of
John, for instance, was not written by anyone named John, but the author
is thought to be the only Evangelist who actually lived during the time
of Jesus' life.>>
Biblical scholarship (that I've read) generally considers two possibilities:
That there were two Johns--John the Evangelist and John the Apostle--or that
these two titles both applied to the same person. If you actually READ the
freaking gospel for yourself and MAKE YOUR OWN judgements (god forbid! :) )
you'd notice a lot of details that are really irrelevant to the
narrative--where Jesus happened to be standing in the temple when he spoke,
the exact number of fish caught, etc, etc...things that only an eyewitness
would remember or care to include in his or her narrative. You don't see too
much of that stuff in the other gospel accounts. If you read the structure of
the narrative, and compare it to other gospel accounts, you'd notice how very
strongly John is told from One Particular point of view, while the others seem
to adopt the viewpoint of an outside observer.
The book of Luke, if we believe it's own testimony as far as its authorship is
concerned, was written by Luke the traveling companion of Paul, who researched
eyewitness accounts to develop his gospel. It does not claim to have been
written by an eyewitness.
Mark was traditionally believed to have been written under Peter's direction.
Modern Biblical scholarship believes Mark to have been the earliest gospel,
and that all gospels relied on a "sayings source" of some kind--a collection
of the words of Christ--that preexisted all gospel accounts. It is commonly
thought that all other gospels borrowed from Mark, John the least extensively,
however...
Matthew was always believed to have been written after Mark, but newer
scholarship (from what I've heard, I'm not keeping up very well anymore) is
taking seriously the idea that Matthew was originally written in Aramaic, then
translated into Greek, thus perhaps the earliest gospel.
At any rate, all four gospels are in Greek, and Jesus spoke Aramaic, then
Hebrew in the synagogues. So when we read the words of Christ, we are always
reading a translation. When we read them in English, we are reading a
translation of a translation. I've studied koine Greek just a little bit, and
my experience has been that English gives you a black and white sketch, but
Greek gives you a picture in full color. But both depict the same image...
BTW--If Jesus was like most people of his day, he also knew Greek, because
that was the common language of the day.
As far as the Greek texts of the NT, well, we have So Many texts from So many
different parts of the Roman Empire, dating from So Many Different times, that
it would be difficult for ALL Copies of ALL texts to be corrupted in the same
way. Actually, virtually impossible. Besides actual Greek texts of the
Scriptures, we have quotations in other early documents (some more accurate
than others). Editors tended to, when dealing with the Biblical text,
sometimes smooth the Greek out a bit (John's was a bit rough, kinda lending
credibility to the idea that Greek was not the author's native tongue, Aramaic
is more likely), sometimes they transposed letters, and the Western Text of
the book of Acts is actually about 30% longer than any othe text of Acts--so
editors may have embellished at times.
The Dead Sea Scrolls are remarkable in that the texts of the Hebrew Scriptures
they contained dated from the time of Christ. Previous to their discovery,
the oldest Hebrew texts we had were the Masoretic texts dating from the 10th
century. Over the course of 900 years, you would be surprised how well
preserved the Hebrew Scriptures were. The DSS contained complete texts of the
book of Isaiah and Deuteronomy, and fragments of all books of the Hebrew
Scriptures except one or two (don't remember what they were).
I got this information about the quality of the Masoretic texts, as compared
to the DSS, from a Jewish Rabbi teaching a class in the Hebrew Scriptures. He
came from a liberal branch of Judaism himself, so was not motivated to
exaggerate the quality of the texts.
Textual critics feel that by comparing texts, they can recover probably well
over 90% of the original document. If you want a detailed, although very old,
description of the process as it relates to the Christian New Testament, read
Westcott and Hort's Introduction to the New Testament in the Original Greek.
You'd be surprised at the common sense involved...
<< Think of all the murder and mayhem that this book has spawned. It's
sad, but also somewhat hilarious. And yet, through all this
mistranslation and deliberate alteration, Jesus still tells Peter in the
Garden of Gesthemane, "Put away thy sword." And yet Peter still draws
his sword at every whim, and isn't afraid to use it.
Now what was it that Scottie was saying about giving homilies...?
the reverend
Brendan >>
Brendan, books don't spawn murder and mayhem. That would be like saying
Salinger is responsible for the nut who shot John Lennon. Give a nut a good
book and he will find a reason to interpret it badly. Books don't kill
people, people do...
and, as you pointed out, everything about the New Testament kinda tells you to
act otherwise...
Jim