ironchef texmex
November 22nd, 2006, 09:50 AM
That’s an entertaining twist – the unreliability of translations of the text of holy books is offered as evidence of their truth! So believers can have it both ways - either the holy books are the direct inerrant divine word and stand alone as The Truth, or their fluidity in translation allows them to be interpreted as The Truth by the modern faithful. It must be difficult to put oneself through these contortions, all to accommodate a belief in some deity. If the word usually translated as “day” isn’t in fact 24 little hours, then why does the Judeo-Christian tradition enjoin a “day” of rest upon its followers? Why not an aeon of rest, or a geological age of rest, or any of the other facile translations believers find for themselves?
Well, if you do in fact "lose all interest" in the potential validity of ancient writings then I suppose that you probably won't have the attention to spare for my reply, after all, it is sort of long.... But since lack of interest on the part of religious detractors has never stopped me before on this thread ;) here's your answer:
Ancient languages had to make much greater use of context then modern literature. They had less to work with. At the time when the Hebrews began to canonize their holy books there were probably no more than 10,000 distinct words in the Hebrew lexicon (Greek clocked in at about 30,000). On top of that, there were no punctuation marks, no indentions, no titles, and no chapter and verse numbers. So it should be impossible to ever discern the author's original meaning, right?
Wrong.
The only part of my particular holy book that is vague - and it is intentionally vague - are the prophetic messages concerning the end of the world. I'm kind of happy about that, by the way. I know not all of my Christian buddies agree with me on this, by I really and truly DO NOT want to know the date and time of the Armageddon. That's just me.
Everything else was meant to be known; meant to be understood; meant to be the objective standard for an orthodoxy that would last, unchanged, through the generations. To this end the writers of these ancient texts went to great lengths to make their writings transparent to the reader. They used a number of different devices: historical narrative, poetic verse, parables, recorded conversations, sermons, and allegories. Oh, and creation stories.
Every ancient religion had its creation stories. The Bible contains more than a half dozen. The seven day formation of the world, Adam and Eve, the first sin, Cain and Abel, the tower of Babel, the rise of the Nephilum, the flood; all of these are properly termed -- creation stories.
These creation stories make up the first six chapters of the book of Genesis. They represent the oldest -- by far -- of all the Hebrew writings. And they almost certainly had to have been writings, since these passages contain none of the poetic meter that is found in the ancient oral traditions. These would have been clay tablets that the Hebrew brought with them when they migrated to Egypt. No one can say how far back they go. Similar texts have been found that date as far back 3200 BC.
Now imagine for a second that you are living in 4th, 5th, 6th, whatever millenium BC and you know how the world was formed. Heck, let's take out the metaphysical elements. Let's say that you were visited by a time traveler from thousands of years in the future. He told you... no... better yet... he's brought back a TV with him and he SHOWED you how the world was formed. Now you're going to preserve this knowledge for all time by etching it into clay because hey, you're primitive, and this guy won't leave you the TV. How are you going to do it? What would you say? You can't use any of the scientific jargon that you were just exposed to. The time traveler wouldn't actually sit down and teach you science (you asked him, but he said no. You asked why and he said that you'd just make bombs and blow yourselves up. Then, to top it off, you tried to sell him on the inherent goodness of man and told him you would use it for the betterment of mankind. He pulled the TV back out and showed you a history film.)
So what would you do? Ah, you say, I would make it clear that these were eons and not days? Of course you would. But since you don't have a word for 'eon' (or hours, or minutes or...) you would simply make it clear that you were talking about an eon by showing events that everyone who you thought would read these passages would clearly recognize as being the kind of things that took long periods of time, like, say, crop cycles (Genesis 1: 11-12), which your agrarian readers would have known to take seasons, not hours. Maybe.
But what do I know? I'm just a contortionist and I get confused easily.
Sheep that I am, I've been led to believe that a modern translation such as the NAS applies the best scholarship concerning Greek and Hebrew from both religious and secular experts, that there's 99.9 percent agreement on the word use, and the .1 percent do nothing to impact the doctrine.
Furthermore, in between wiping away the spittle that tends to collect below my slacken jaw :rolleyes: , I've been led to believe that the disagreements that I have with other Christians have nothing to do with translation. If you put me in a room with a Presbyterian USA minister and have us go line by line through the text, you would find that we agree on almost every word. The disagreement would have to do with the attatchment of meaning. Things that he took figuratively, I take literally. He would say "Yes, that's what it says, but that was for the people of that particular age." I would say, "No, that's for the people of any age. That's what it says. That's what the writers meant, and that's what the people who received it clearly understood."
For people who want to make the Bible say something that it doesn't, the option is usually to do what a number of christian offshoots have done over the centuries and write your own version. Then you don't have to struggle over any "intended meaning". You don't have to worry yourself with any objective standards for interpretation.
You can make it say whatever you want.
Well, if you do in fact "lose all interest" in the potential validity of ancient writings then I suppose that you probably won't have the attention to spare for my reply, after all, it is sort of long.... But since lack of interest on the part of religious detractors has never stopped me before on this thread ;) here's your answer:
Ancient languages had to make much greater use of context then modern literature. They had less to work with. At the time when the Hebrews began to canonize their holy books there were probably no more than 10,000 distinct words in the Hebrew lexicon (Greek clocked in at about 30,000). On top of that, there were no punctuation marks, no indentions, no titles, and no chapter and verse numbers. So it should be impossible to ever discern the author's original meaning, right?
Wrong.
The only part of my particular holy book that is vague - and it is intentionally vague - are the prophetic messages concerning the end of the world. I'm kind of happy about that, by the way. I know not all of my Christian buddies agree with me on this, by I really and truly DO NOT want to know the date and time of the Armageddon. That's just me.
Everything else was meant to be known; meant to be understood; meant to be the objective standard for an orthodoxy that would last, unchanged, through the generations. To this end the writers of these ancient texts went to great lengths to make their writings transparent to the reader. They used a number of different devices: historical narrative, poetic verse, parables, recorded conversations, sermons, and allegories. Oh, and creation stories.
Every ancient religion had its creation stories. The Bible contains more than a half dozen. The seven day formation of the world, Adam and Eve, the first sin, Cain and Abel, the tower of Babel, the rise of the Nephilum, the flood; all of these are properly termed -- creation stories.
These creation stories make up the first six chapters of the book of Genesis. They represent the oldest -- by far -- of all the Hebrew writings. And they almost certainly had to have been writings, since these passages contain none of the poetic meter that is found in the ancient oral traditions. These would have been clay tablets that the Hebrew brought with them when they migrated to Egypt. No one can say how far back they go. Similar texts have been found that date as far back 3200 BC.
Now imagine for a second that you are living in 4th, 5th, 6th, whatever millenium BC and you know how the world was formed. Heck, let's take out the metaphysical elements. Let's say that you were visited by a time traveler from thousands of years in the future. He told you... no... better yet... he's brought back a TV with him and he SHOWED you how the world was formed. Now you're going to preserve this knowledge for all time by etching it into clay because hey, you're primitive, and this guy won't leave you the TV. How are you going to do it? What would you say? You can't use any of the scientific jargon that you were just exposed to. The time traveler wouldn't actually sit down and teach you science (you asked him, but he said no. You asked why and he said that you'd just make bombs and blow yourselves up. Then, to top it off, you tried to sell him on the inherent goodness of man and told him you would use it for the betterment of mankind. He pulled the TV back out and showed you a history film.)
So what would you do? Ah, you say, I would make it clear that these were eons and not days? Of course you would. But since you don't have a word for 'eon' (or hours, or minutes or...) you would simply make it clear that you were talking about an eon by showing events that everyone who you thought would read these passages would clearly recognize as being the kind of things that took long periods of time, like, say, crop cycles (Genesis 1: 11-12), which your agrarian readers would have known to take seasons, not hours. Maybe.
But what do I know? I'm just a contortionist and I get confused easily.
Sheep that I am, I've been led to believe that a modern translation such as the NAS applies the best scholarship concerning Greek and Hebrew from both religious and secular experts, that there's 99.9 percent agreement on the word use, and the .1 percent do nothing to impact the doctrine.
Furthermore, in between wiping away the spittle that tends to collect below my slacken jaw :rolleyes: , I've been led to believe that the disagreements that I have with other Christians have nothing to do with translation. If you put me in a room with a Presbyterian USA minister and have us go line by line through the text, you would find that we agree on almost every word. The disagreement would have to do with the attatchment of meaning. Things that he took figuratively, I take literally. He would say "Yes, that's what it says, but that was for the people of that particular age." I would say, "No, that's for the people of any age. That's what it says. That's what the writers meant, and that's what the people who received it clearly understood."
For people who want to make the Bible say something that it doesn't, the option is usually to do what a number of christian offshoots have done over the centuries and write your own version. Then you don't have to struggle over any "intended meaning". You don't have to worry yourself with any objective standards for interpretation.
You can make it say whatever you want.