The 400th Anniversary of the publication of the KJV.

classical_hero

In whom I trust
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There is no book in the history of the Western world that has caused more changes and caused more controversy than the Bible has. No other version of the Bible has been printed in the English language than the King James Version. Not matter what your view on the bible actually,is, you still have to remark on this amazing achievement.
 
No other version of the Bible has been printed in the English language than the King James Version.

What are you talking about? There are dozens and dozens of English translations of the Bible.

I'm also not sure of the claim that no book in the western world has caused more changes and controversy than the Bible has. In fact, I'm not sure that the Bible has caused all that many changes. Certainly Christianity has, but that is not the same thing. If you want to point to books that have caused immense changes, I'd say the obvious candidate is The communist manifesto. If you want to stick to Christianity, the impact of Ignatius of Antioch's Letter to the Romans and Athanasius of Alexandria's Life of Antony cannot be underestimated. They inspired the ideals of martyrdom and monasticism respectively.
 
Not matter what your view on the bible actually,is, you still have to remark on this amazing achievement.
If the Bible had been so influential because the Bible is such an awesome book (in whatever way), I would agree. However, as things are, it is just a testimony of the absurdity of human nature. And that is not an achievement, but a fact of nature. And we don't know who to thank for that.
 
The KJV is problematic. First of all it comes from a corrupt Byzantine manuscript. Secondly it's overly literal. Third, it's in such archaic English it leads people to make all sorts of strange mistakes in understanding. Still, it's better than that apologetic hack job the NIV.

The best you can do for translations, IMO, is the Oxford Study Tanakh for the OT and either Lattimore's New Testament or Robert M. Price's Pre-Nicene New Testament; though the latter is a reconstruction to find out what the Nicene-era redactors screwed with.
Please don't start an argument about the stupidity of Christianity or anything like that. I've moved/deleted enough of them today already.
Yeah, the village atheist act is tiresome. I think that Christianity is about as true as the Illiad so I don't bother. I don't need to constantly harp about how silly it is to believe that Athena helps out Greek warriors because I don't believe in Athena. I wish the Evangelical Atheists would do the same.
 
RJMooreII, I'm curious by what credentials you recommend the most accurate Bible translation.
 
RJMooreII, I'm curious by what credentials you recommend the most accurate Bible translation.
Reading people who know what they're talking about. You don't have to know Greek to know about problems in various translations. Texts are not magical and mysterious just because they're written in another language. Likewise, Walter Kaufmann does some of the best if not the best translation of Nietzsche. I don't speak German, and don't need to. And Nietzsche is a lot more subtle than the Bible.

And if you think you need a degree to know what you're talking about, I LOL heartily. Tell that to Hume.
 
Reading people who know what they're talking about. You don't have to know Greek to know about problems in various translations. Texts are not magical and mysterious just because they're written in another language. Likewise, Walter Kaufmann does some of the best if not the best translation of Nietzsche. I don't speak German, and don't need to. And Nietzsche is a lot more subtle than the Bible.

Armchair theologian, are we? The problem with knowing nothing and going by what other people say is that it's hard to identify which people "know what they're talking about," especially in a field where even on the most basic of matters, opinions are widely heterogeneous. Hence why people without any actual knowledge of Koine Greek, Hebrew, Latin or Aramaic are almost guaranteed to be unemployed in the field of Biblical studies. In fact, even if you're some sort of linguistic deity that is fluent in all four of those, you still wouldn't be qualified to do anything if you have no knowledge of patristic theology, antiquity socio-history or Levantine anthropology.

The Nietzsche comparison is imprudent, since though he was vague or obscure on some matters, there's a general consensus as to what Nietzsche actually meant, which is not true for the Bible. That's important because it's impossible to "perfectly" translate anything from one language to another, due to the fact that words don't mean the exact same thing across languages. So all translations are, to some degree, an interpretation of the author.

Given the fact that there's hundreds of thousands of opinions on interpretation of the Bible, that becomes a pretty unmanageable thing to deal with; so waving off anybody who challenges your nonprofessional opinion because you've read "people who know what they're talking about" is poppycock.

And if you think you need a degree to know what you're talking about, I LOL heartily. Tell that to Hume.

Hume wasn't a Biblical theologian.
 
Likewise, Walter Kaufmann does some of the best if not the best translation of Nietzsche. I don't speak German, and don't need to. And Nietzsche is a lot more subtle than the Bible.
That's very seventies of you.
 
If you're talking about the most reliable translations, the RSV and the NRSV are the standard translations used by most biblical scholars. So I would take those to be the most reliable, although no translation is perfect.

...to find out what the Nicene-era redactors screwed with.

Erm, the who?
 
While (from what I can see) the King James Bible is not the best translation, it's still extremely important from a literary and cultural standpoint, and probably the most engaging of the Biblical translations I've read so far.
 
Blah blah blah, the Bible isn't that special.

I don't know where the qualifier "special" entered in here. The word more appropriate would probably be "complex", and is properly suffixed with "to the point of requiring doctorate-level knowledge in order to make any sort of specific and accurate claim about."

I also don't give a damn, because it's just a book.

OK. So, I take it you're retracting any claim to having credentials to speak about this matter?

If you're talking about the most reliable translations, the RSV and the NRSV are the standard translations used by most biblical scholars. So I would take those to be the most reliable, although no translation is perfect.

Depends on what you're using Scripture for. The standard Bible for theological usage in Western Christianity is currently the Nova Vulgata for Catholics and some weird mixture of the NSRV and NIV for Protestants. If you're in the field of textual criticism, you're going to be reading in Koine Greek and Hebrew, so English translations would only be relevant for people who are still learning those two languages.

While (from what I can see) the King James Bible is not the best translation, it's still extremely important from a literary and cultural standpoint, and probably the most engaging of the Biblical translations I've read so far.

The KJV is ripe with intentional mistranslations in order to mischievously back up the erroneous theology of the 17th-century Anglican Church, but I still praise its literary value. Even Catholics typically learn the KJV version of Psalm 23.
 
The KJV is problematic. First of all it comes from a corrupt Byzantine manuscript. Secondly it's overly literal. Third, it's in such archaic English it leads people to make all sorts of strange mistakes in understanding. Still, it's better than that apologetic hack job the NIV.

The best you can do for translations, IMO, is the Oxford Study Tanakh for the OT and either Lattimore's New Testament or Robert M. Price's Pre-Nicene New Testament; though the latter is a reconstruction to find out what the Nicene-era redactors screwed with.

Yeah, the village atheist act is tiresome. I think that Christianity is about as true as the Illiad so I don't bother. I don't need to constantly harp about how silly it is to believe that Athena helps out Greek warriors because I don't believe in Athena. I wish the Evangelical Atheists would do the same.
You have my deepest gratitude for providing humor in my life
 
I also don't give a damn, because it's just a book.

Why say anything about it in the first place, then?

Depends on what you're using Scripture for. The standard Bible for theological usage in Western Christianity is currently the Nova Vulgata for Catholics and some weird mixture of the NSRV and NIV for Protestants. If you're in the field of textual criticism, you're going to be reading in Koine Greek and Hebrew, so English translations would only be relevant for people who are still learning those two languages.

Of course. But even biblical scholars typically use the RSV and NRSV, and it is usual for them to quote from those translations when quoting in English.

I don't know if many theologians use the NIV. I hope not, because as RJMooreII rightly says, it is a badly partisan translation, which is mainly used by evangelicals.
 
My expertise is in ethics, not in Biblical studies; so I can only go by my common experience in what I've read. Most professional theologians I've read quote either the NRSV or the NIV. I myself use the Douay-Rheims because that's a direct translation from the Vulgate, which is more appropriate for papers pertaining to Roman Catholicism.
 
My expertise is in ethics, not in Biblical studies; so I can only go by my common experience in what I've read. Most professional theologians I've read quote either the NRSV or the NIV. I myself use the Douay-Rheims because that's a direct translation from the Vulgate, which is more appropriate for papers pertaining to Roman Catholicism.

The original Douay-Rheims or the Challoner Douay-Rheims?
 
The original Douay-Rheims or the Challoner Douay-Rheims?

The Challoner. Nobody uses the original Douay-Rheims anymore, since English was a lot more burdensome back when the only vowel was "y".
 
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