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Old 06-21-2008, 06:16 PM
Steven Avery Steven Avery is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Posts: 462
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Hi Buythetruth,

The problems in the modern versions in the Old Testament are generally of two types.

1) inferior translation

2) use of Greek, Aramaic, Chaldee, and other sources to emend or 'correct' or somehow change the Masoretic Text or its historically accepted understanding

While the Ben Hayim is superior to the Ben Asher, they are both Masoretic texts, a realm with a fairly well standardized text. So I will share that the degree of difference is far less than some seem to imply. (I've seen counts of nine significant phrase differences, however the modus operandi of variant counts has no standard.) This is one of my main concerns with King James Bible modern book scholarship, the possible implication that there are huge differences in these texts, deliberate or accidental.

The Ben Hayim is far superior in consistency on Tetragram vowel pointing than, e.g. the Leningrad text. However, while significant, that is relevant mainly for the 'Jehovah' vs. pretender name discussions.

The translation problems in the modern versions are huge, I like to give Jeremiah 8:8 as a good example (where the translation error is taken up by skeptics and islamists and lds and all sorts of folks hostile to the pure and perfect Bible). In many cases you will find that the better Jewish translations and the King James Bible are in agreement against the modern versions, including Jeremiah 8:8. The King James Bible translators were excellent in Hebrew and Aramaic translation, and were well acquainted with the works of the Hebraicists like Kimchi and Rashi. Today's translators seemed to be skilled more at looking at a lexicon than reading, speaking, living, breathing and understanding the Biblical languages. Rarely do I find a reference to even the mikra'ot gadalot from the modern translation scholars, which is still today the foundational Hebraic scholarship source.

Returning to the current situation.

While Will Kinney has excellently compiled articles on many translation blunders in the modern versions. John Hinton has done fine scholarly work showing the modern version stupidity leaving the Masoretic text for cognate language conjectures.

By making an artificially inflated case against the Ben Asher text (examples not given, as you seem to have noted) the true modern version OT blunders and errors, as documented e.g. by Will Kinney, are not given their proper due in most King James Bible literature. Also scholarly aptitude and savvy may be questioned if an author leaves you vague and uncertain on this question.

Anyway, that is my short answer for now .

Some of the very best quality material is on the net. This is similar to the New Testament situation where Brandon's Magic Marker page is probably the best single presentation of alexandrian-based modern version tampering.

Shalom,
Steven

Last edited by Steven Avery; 06-21-2008 at 06:34 PM.