Comments on: Burning Bibles as literary criticism

By: Anderson

Anderson — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 16:14:21 +0000

Thanks, Davis — John 11:35 was part of the lectionary reading yesterday, and I wondered what about the Greek made “began to weep” correct.

By: evil is evil

evil is evil — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 01:58:50 +0000

You actually spent time doing this? I cannot believe I actually spent part of my life reading this.

Hell, if you will me give the pastor’s address, I will ship him more matches. Bug eyed lunatic or not, he does my militant atheistic bidding.

I have never chanted, “Burn, baby, burn,” more fervently.

By: Sean

Sean — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:36:58 +0000

Ah, Canton! I used to live in Candler, halfway between Canton and Asheville. Canton is home to the Blue Ridge paper mill, which means that the entire town smells like festering shit. I got whifs of that about once a week. Lovely! There’s actually a radio station in Asheville whose call letters are WKJV; their slogan is “The King’s Radio!” Them ole mountain Baptists, the “innupenent” ones (for whom the Southern Baptist Convention is den of sell-out hellbound sinners, liberals, and lovers of Catholicism, Mormonism, and all other abominations) like their Bibles unchanging, their pastors frothy-mouthed, and their vegetables fried. It is, therefore, no surprise whatsoever that mistranslations will be sent to the flames. These are not people known for their appreciation of nuance and subtlety; such people can join the Methodists!*

*Or the Universalists. Another community in Haywood County, in which Canton is located, boasted of a Universalist Church in the first half of the 20th Century. The community was called Sunburst, IIRC, and it was basically a glorified logging camp. So I’m not saying there’s no spiritual diversity in Western NC, just that it’s not looked upon favorably by the people who attend these kinds of churches.

By: Betsy

Betsy — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 00:10:16 +0000

This is a problem of the philistinic brand of puritanism. The fundies are prevented from professing a love of beauty or art, so they have to seize on supposed ‘inerrancy’ as their ostensible reason for rejecting the other versions.

By: Mark Kleiman

Mark Kleiman — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:32:28 +0000

Yes, the newer translations are often more accurate, and often more comprehensible to modern ears. What’s lost is the music. That’s what makes the pastor’s choice so deliciously weird; he has in effect chosen poetry over faithfulness to the text.

By: Bloix

Bloix — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 20:07:53 +0000

Often the changes are prompted by a desire to avoid misunderstanding due to changes in the meaning of English words. “I shall not want” means, to a modern reader, “I will not desire anything” rather than “my needs will be satisfied.” The newer translations – e.g. I shall not be in want – prevent this misunderstaning.

But

The Lord’ is my shep’herd
I shall’ not want’

is a couplet of iambic dimeter, and the translations lose this entirely. The gain to clarity is set off by the loss of conviction. There’s no recognition that the rhythm of words imparts a power that adds belief to meaning.

Another example: the King James has Jesus say, “Suffer the little children to come unto Me,” where virtually all the more recent translations, including the NIV and the NKJV say, “Let the little children come to me,” because “suffer” meaning “permit” is entirely obsolete and many people think that Jesus was talking about chldren in pain. But the poetry of the KJV -

Suff’er the litt’le child’ren to come’ unto me’
And for-bid’ them not’; for such’ is the king’dom of God’

two lines of blank verse –
and it’s lost in all the modern versions.

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By: Swift Loris

Swift Loris — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:45:35 +0000

he refers to “the TR-Textus Receptus (Masoretic Test) that underlays the King James Version”

Sheesh, he can’t even speak English himself!

By: Seth Gordon

Seth Gordon — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 17:36:30 +0000

Personally I think the New Jewish Publication Society version has the stamp of the Almighty, because it had an Orthodox, a Conservative, and a Reform rabbi on the translation committee, and what other than Divine intervention could have kept them off one another’s throats?

Their translation of the 23rd psalm begins:

The Lord is my shepherd;
  I lack nothing.
He makes me lie down in green pastures;
  He leads me to water in places of repose;
  He renews my life;
  He guides me in right paths
  as befits His name.

Yeah, that “water in places of repose” is ugly, but if I understand the Hebrew correctly, mei menuchot is in semichut form, so it really means “water of things-that-rest” rather than “resting water”. “He leads me to a spa” would really get Euterpe’s dander up.

By: Ed Whitney

Ed Whitney — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:51:27 +0000

I seem to recall Dwight MacDonald, the old curmudgeon who wrote for the New Yorker and the New York Review of Books, heaping scorn on The New English Bible that came out in the 60s. He said that the translation did preserve “Jesus wept.” But he was certain that they had been inclined to translate “Jesus burst into tears.”

By: Davis X. Machina

Davis X. Machina — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 14:46:19 +0000

John 11:35 is an inceptive aorist. The NSRV gets it right.