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Originally Posted by PHTlump  The Old Testament has very few translation issues. I grant that the most popular version of the New Testament (KJV) was translated from Greek, to Latin, to English. And there are some mistakes. But the mistakes tend to be fairly minor. For example, when Jesus told the adulteress to sin no more, the original Greek or Hebrew writings don't translate to "keep sinning." That would be a major change that would be relevant to this discussion. Arguing that the KJV translators missed a few commas or changed an "or" to an "and" may be academically interesting. But, it isn't really relevant. |
I'd say that translations/interpretations such as "Is it 'thou shalt not kill' or 'thou shalt not commit murder?" is a bit more than a few missed commas or altered conjunctions. And, as mentioned before, factor in the agendas involved in those translations and interpretations (something not even touched upon in my letter translation example) along with later translators and interpreters themselves working from a translated interpretation and you've got a recipe for unreliability as anything other than fable and allegory.
Think of a game of "Telephone." For example, we played it at one of our high school play cast parties. There were maybe 15 of us there. What started with the first girl in the circle saying, "I like boys and Chitaquah (sp?) Lake." came back around to her as, "I like Joel and we did it in a lake." That's just 15 people, in the same room, mere feet from one another, all speaking the same language, and all supposedly with the intent of keeping the original message intact by the time it completes the circle. Now, wouldn't you agree that a two millennia long game of telephone, with transitions between languages and agendas behind reinterpreting from a previous version I any language (for instance, with the King James version you referenced, James gave the translators instructions intended to guarantee that the new version would conform to the ecclesiology and reflect the episcopal structure of the Church of England and its belief in an ordained clergy), that there's a margin of error that widens each time the book is retranslated and/or reinterpreted?
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